Mercury Pollution: A Transdisciplinary Treatment

Edited by

Sharon L. Zuber and Michael C. Newman

MERCURY POLLUTION A Transdisciplinary Treatment

MERCURY POLLUTION A Transdisciplinary Treatment Edited by

Sharon L. Zuber and Michael C. Newman

Boca Raton London New York

CRC Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Cover Insert: Artisanal gold miners using mercury at the El Pache refinery in Porto Velo, Ecuador. (Photo by Kris Lane, 2007.)

CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group 6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300 Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742 © 2012 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business No claim to original U.S. Government works Version Date: 20110711 International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-4398-3388-9 (eBook - PDF) This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources. Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences of their use. The authors and publishers have attempted to trace the copyright holders of all material reproduced in this publication and apologize to copyright holders if permission to publish in this form has not been obtained. If any copyright material has not been acknowledged please write and let us know so we may rectify in any future reprint. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, please access www.copyright.com (http://www.copyright.com/) or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. CCC is a not-for-profit organization that provides licenses and registration for a variety of users. For organizations that have been granted a photocopy license by the CCC, a separate system of payment has been arranged. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www.taylorandfrancis.com and the CRC Press Web site at http://www.crcpress.com

Contents Foreword...................................................................................................................vii Preface.......................................................................................................................xi Acknowledgments....................................................................................................xix The Editors...............................................................................................................xxi Contributors.......................................................................................................... xxiii Key to Maps and Related Chapters.......................................................................xxvii Chapter 1 When the Scientific Vantage Is Not Enough......................................... 1 Michael C. Newman Chapter 2 Dangerous Attractions: Mercury in Human History........................... 13 Kris Lane Chapter 3 Human Impacts on Earth’s Natural Mercury Cycle............................ 33 Elizabeth Malcolm Chapter 4 Mercury by the Numbers.................................................................... 51 Michael C. Newman and Kenneth M. Y. Leung Chapter 5 Is Tuna Safe? A Sociological Analysis of Federal Fish Advisories............................................................................................ 71 Kelly Joyce Chapter 6 How USA Today Constructs the Problem of Mercury Pollution: A Sociological Analysis of Risk and Blame..................................... 101 Christine Mowery and Sarah Jane Brubaker Chapter 7 Input/Output: Researching and Communicating Mercury Issues Online..................................................................................... 119 John Garnett Drummond Chapter 8 Making Mercury Visible: The Minamata Documentaries of Tsuchimoto Noriaki...................................................................... 139 Justin Jesty v

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Chapter 9 Mercury-Inspired Arts...................................................................... 161 Kira Obolensky and Elizabeth Mead Chapter 10 Writing as Environmental Stewardship............................................ 185 Sydney Landon Plum Chapter 11 The Necessity of International Agreement....................................... 211 I.L. “Pep” Fuller and Clare Stankwitz Afterword: Through Your Eyes........................................................................... 239 Li Xiong and Sharon L. Zuber

Foreword Aileen M. Smith Mercury is the gravest chemical pollutant problem of our time, and this is the first publication that has undertaken holistic coverage of this truly global issue. This book is an outstanding product of the innovative Global Inquiry Groups (GIG) process of interdisciplinary collaboration, which brings together the physical sciences, social sciences, and the humanities, including the study of media, visual, and literary arts, uniquely enabling us to look at and understand mercury from the many perspectives needed in order to grasp the problem in its totality. The GIG process is based on international and cross-disciplinary collaborations by students and faculty at the College of William & Mary campus interfacing with researchers, artists, and activists holding various positions—some colliding—on the mercury issue, and subsequent sharing of findings with the community beyond campus through symposia and student presentations (some of them from field trips abroad), art exhibitions, and film screenings. This GIG’s work, therefore, also serves as a model of what can potentially be achieved from within one college. It helps us think about how the college campus can aid us in creating essential connections to solve the challenges of our time. Publication of this book is also very timely. In February 2009, after years of hard work by citizen organizations, victims of mercury pollution, researchers, and scientists, the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) agreed on the need to develop a global, legally binding instrument on mercury. The second session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to prepare this instrument took place in Japan in January 2011. The goal is to complete all necessary negotiations before the United Nations Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum of 2013. This book clarifies how we are all connected to mercury, how we take it in through the food we eat and the air we breathe, and how we release it as a consequence of our lifestyle. It tells us about the relationship people have had with mercury from ancient to modern times. It tells us how people have given artistic expression to the ravages of mercury, touching our emotions and changing us. It refers to the social injustice of mercury pollution. The brunt of the problem has been imposed most on those less economically and socially advantaged: indigenous peoples, artisanal miners, and the poor who live in coastal areas afflicted with mercury pollution. Society and politicians, however, have ignored or paid little attention to their plight. Even today prevention and compensation lag far behind, and the world’s most vulnerable populations continue to be disproportionally affected. The largest contribution by individuals in most industrialized countries comes from their use of electricity, because coal-fired power plants have become the major source of mercury caused by human activity. The myriad uses of mercury in lamps, lightbulbs, and medical applications are also large contributors. Mercury is the only metal vii

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found as a gas in the earth’s atmosphere. It travels globally. And our land and waters are polluted both locally and globally from uses of products containing mercury. My personal realization of our interconnectedness in this world came to me quite unexpectedly twenty-five years ago, at the time of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986. In Japan, 8,000 kilometers distant from the explosion, a colleague of mine who is a nuclear physicist was checking his radiation monitoring equipment, thinking it would be impossible for the radioactive cloud to travel as far as Japan. There was no sign of any release from the accident until five days later, when suddenly the display screen reacted wildly. The radioactive cloud had landed. People around me talked about how shocked they were, but in that instant I had a completely different vision. It was not just that week that we were connected to that part of the world. Last year, a decade ago, 100 years ago, and also tomorrow, next year, and thereon, we had been and would remain continually connected. Not only were we connected to that place 8,000 kilometers away, we were connected to everything between there and here, and whatever we did here in Japan we were passing on to other places. Suddenly I realized that even my own body was not alone. It was the sum total of the living history of this earth. The water and everything inside me had been shared before and I was sharing it as I lived and would pass it on when I died. My partner, the photojournalist W. Eugene Smith, and I first heard about the methylmercury poisoning tragedy of Minamata Disease back in 1971. The chemical company Chisso had polluted the waters surrounding Minamata Bay in Japan. The poisoning was discovered in 1956, when it had reached epidemic proportions. When we decided to go and photograph it, I remember some scientists telling us, “Why go now to photograph? The incident is over. It’s history.” But I learned subsequently, during the three years Eugene and I lived and photographed there, that this was far from the truth (see Figure 1). Even today the victims of Minamata Disease, the largest single incident of mercury poisoning caused by industrial pollution, are still fighting for justice in the courts. Lack of action on the part of the Japanese government and industry has resulted in more than 40,000 victims in Japan today who are either recognized as suffering from this methylmercury poisoning or still seeking recognition as Minamata Disease victims. The Japanese government has yet to undertake a proper epidemiological study of the people affected by the contamination and has never supplied any explanation to substantiate the claim that the government’s medical criteria for victim certification are based on sound medical science. We remain right in the thick of this historic tragedy. I tell young people in Japan, “When you see visual images of the contorted limbs of the Minamata victims, do not feel sorry for them. You and they are connected. It is because they and other pollution victims fought in the courts that much stricter environmental laws were enacted in Japan in the mid-1970s.” I tell them that, “Because of this, your parents, when you were developing in your mother’s womb and when you were growing up, were exposed to much less chemical pollutants. If it weren’t for the people you see in these photographs, you yourselves would have that much more chemical pollution in your body today.” History has taught us that reducing the supply, demand, and trade of mercury, rather than trying to control its releases, is the most effective way to deal with this chemical.

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It is up to the collective us whether or not humanity will be able to create this vitally necessary global, legally-binding treaty properly and in a timely manner at the UN level, implement it, and initiate and implement controls locally including those which will affect our own lives. We are, indeed, all active players in the global mercury picture. Mercury is a reflection of our interconnectedness. The only way to reduce this chemical hazard is to be aware of this connectedness and, through our awareness, take action. Aileen Mioko Smith Coauthor, Minamata, with W. Eugene Smith 10 September 2010 Kyoto, Japan

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FIGURE 1  Shinobu and her mother preparing to leave the Minamata train station for the United Nations Environmental Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. In Minamata, Photograph by W. Eugene Smith, 1972. Courtesy of Aileen Archive.

Preface Sharon L. Zuber What do a baby bird, a Life magazine photograph, a reddish-colored rock, and blue sky have in common? Each made mercury pollution visible for a transdisciplinary group of faculty members from the College of William & Mary and inspired the collaborations for this book. The seed for these collaborations was planted in 2006 when Dr. Laurie Koloski, director of the Reves Center for International Studies, in partnership with Joel Schwartz, director of the Roy R. Charles Center for Honors and Interdisciplinary Study, issued an invitation for William & Mary faculty to form Global Inquiry Groups (GIGs) focused on a single research interest. The GIG concept was designed to encourage international and cross-disciplinary collaborations in the areas of undergraduate research, curriculum innovations, and public outreach or, at the very least, to get people “across campus” talking. Just weeks before the GIG announcement appeared, biology professor Dan Cristol asked me if any of my “Film Studies” students would be interested in videotaping work he was doing about mercury in songbirds on the South River in Waynesboro, Virginia. One of my students, Liz Budrionis, a major in neuroscience and minor in film, was a perfect fit for this project since mercury is a known neurotoxin. Serendipitously, Dr. Li Xiong from Central China Normal University (CCNU) in Wuhan was working on postdoctoral research in ecotoxicology and heavy metals at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), a graduate program at the College of William & Mary. She chose to work with Dr. Michael Newman because of his international reputation in this area and because she had used his Fundamentals of Ecotoxicology textbook in a class she taught in China. Her one-year stay in Virginia gave her the opportunity not only to work in the VIMS lab but also immerse herself in US culture, which included sharing a house with me. Over dinner one evening I began talking about a possible film project in Waynesboro, Virginia, and Li Xiong mentioned that one of Professor Newman’s research projects was also on the South River. Soon we were talking about what exactly “ecotoxicology” meant, and Li Xiong explained that she fed toxicants to fish or shrimp not to kill them but ultimately to save them. It quickly became obvious that mercury in the environment linked four faculty members from different disciplines and cultures in a concern about the environment as well as in our research and teaching. Thus, in January 2007 Dan Cristol, Li Xiong, Mike Newman, and I met to discuss organizing an Exploratory GIG (E-GIG) based on the subject of global mercury pollution. We met at a restaurant where our conversation quickly turned to the mercury bioaccumulation in fish as a way to select the best, safest lunch entré. One goal for the E-GIG was to bring together as many people as possible who had an interest in environmental education. The focus on mercury pollution provided xi

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a case study as a way to promote research projects, courses, and public events that would emphasize the global nature of the mercury hazard and how it touches all disciplines with concerns about science, education, economics, law, art, etc. Our vision was to share information about mercury pollution that would be accessible to a general audience, not just scientists and college professors. More specifically our goal was to see if enough people were interested in the topic to apply for a threeyear grant that would allow us to expand the interdisciplinary and international connections that had so energized our group. Throughout the semester the E-GIG sponsored three general meetings and a field trip open to the campus community. Meeting topics focused on “Ecological Health,” “The History and Globalization of Mercury,” and “Mercury and Human Health.” In May the group took a field trip to Waynesboro to see Dan’s research project monitoring mercury in songbirds. We saw the factory, once owned by DuPont, that was responsible for the unintentional mercury pollution during the 1950s as a by-product from the manufacture of rayon. We learned about “biomagnification,” or how methylmercury accumulates, through natural and chemical processes in fish and wildlife. We held baby birds (nestlings), explored nesting sites, and discussed theories about why the mercury in the South River wasn’t dissipating over time as originally predicted and, in fact, seemed to spread far beyond the riverbed. The importance of research at this site was clear; there were few places in the world with such high concentrations of mercury, and what data scientists collected could help researchers around the world who were interested in mercury contamination. Mike Newman introduced our group to photographs by W. Eugene and Aileen M. Smith that some of us remembered from the covers of Life magazine more than thirty years ago. These striking black-and-white images brought the Minamata mercury tragedy into sharper focus for the group. The Smiths traveled to Japan to document the tragedy sparked by the Chisso plant dumping methylated mercury into Minamata Bay. The methylmercury poisoned the fish that provided a livelihood and sustenance for the Japanese community and resulted in thousands of deaths, children born with disabilities, and public health care issues that continue into the twenty-first century. As Mike wrote in his essay for the exhibit catalogue of the Smiths’ photographs, these images—more than any scientific or health report—“wrenched our collective attention away from the benefits of giddy industrialization, revealing the blatantly unacceptable human consequences of pollution” (see Chapter 1). Mike’s presentation and the field trip intrigued art professor and sculptor Elizabeth Mead. She was inspired to develop a new course, “Sculpture in the Global Environment,” which explored the relationship between sculpture and environmental issues and that led to an art exchange with Japanese art graduate students and student projects from her new course. Her interest in the photographs led to her curating an exhibit of the Smith photographs for the Muscarelle Museum on the William & Mary campus that opened in 2010: Unbearable Beauty: Triumph of the Human Spirit. Clearly, the cross-pollination between a scientist’s presentation and an artist’s sensibilities produced representations of mercury poisoning that found their way into public venues and around the globe. People who had never thought about mercury pollution were creating art that expressed their knowledge and personal connection to a global problem.

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Providing the historical context for our project was Professor Kris Lane. He talked about the mercury mines in Spain and passed around the heavy, reddish-colored sample of cinnabar (wrapped safely in a cloth). We learned about mercury use throughout history and about how this “dangerous attraction” still used today has begun to lose its luster in the public imagination. Mercury’s continued use in artisanal gold mining in South America raises issues of economic inequality and public health communication in local communities, issues that would benefit from scientific and international collaboration. Throughout the spring semester many new relationships were forged among faculty who came from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. In addition links were developed globally through Kris Lane’s work in Colombia and Ecuador and Li Xiong’s participation from Wuhan, China. She helped sponsor three faculty–student exchanges that led to cross-cultural perspectives and new ways of understanding environmental concerns. The exchanges began with three Chinese students visiting the William & Mary campus in the spring of 2008. When the CCNU students had been in the United States for a few days, I asked them what most impressed them about Virginia—they were unanimous when they replied, “The blue sky!” I only fully understood their amazement after I had the opportunity to travel to Wuhan, a city of more than 8,000,000 people supported by burgeoning industries and filled with throngs of automobiles. The Chinese students were accustomed to a hazy sky and aware of the price their environment and health were paying for fast-paced industrialization. The E-GIG discussions generated enough interest for a core group of faculty to draft a grant proposal for a three-year effort that would include funding for undergraduate research, new courses, and public events. We were no longer exploratory; we became an S-GIG, or Mercury Sustained Global Inquiry Group. With faculty from biology, sociology, art, film studies, geology, environmental science, and history as well as graduate and undergraduate students, our GIG created a transdisciplinary portal through which to explore international environmental hazards and to instill stewardship and appreciation for the environment. The topic of mercury provided an opportunity to explore the social, cultural, economic, and policy implications of global pollution and emphasize that science is not just contained within the border of a laboratory nor are laboratories separate from politics and cultural production. Over the next three years the energy and enthusiasm produced by this group led to funding student and faculty research projects from “Fetal Exposure to Mercury” to “The Local Dimensions of a Global Hazard: Mercury and Gold Recovery in Southern Ecuador”; new courses such as “Mining the Americas”; and a series of public lectures and film offerings. We learned about the effects of mercury pollution on indigenous peoples from Amy Roe, research assistant at the University of Delaware’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy; Marcello Veiga, from the Department of Mining Engineering at the University of British Columbia; and Robert Davidson, researcher at the Biodome and the Amazon. Filmmaker Hardy Jones focused on the threat to dolphins (anticipating the Oscar winning The Cove for which he was interviewed). Dr. Vera Stejskal, associate professor of immunology at First Medical Faculty at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, came from Europe to talk about allergic reactions to heavy metals putting at risk children due

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to vaccines and dental hygienists, who work with fillings that are more mercury than “silver.” Pep Fuller, EPA’s first standards executive, talked about the difficulty in negotiating a global agreement to curb mercury pollution in spite of the new administration’s declaration of mercury as “the world’s gravest chemical problem” (Maliti, Seattle Times, Feb. 17, 2009). Three years of hard work and planning culminated in the 2010 International Mercury EXPO, “Mercury: A Hazard without Borders” (see Figure 2). Coordinated with the fortieth anniversary of Earth Day, this weekend EXPO included panels, workshops, exhibits, performances, and field trips. The South River Science Team held its quarterly meeting in Williamsburg so its members could attend the sessions, and Sheryl Telford, director of the DuPont Corporate Remediation Group, was the keynote speaker at the luncheon. The variety of participants and presentations showcased the value of a transdisciplinary approach to this important topic. Attendees came from as far away as Belize, Peru, and Japan. In addition, the events attracted William & Mary students and faculty as well as Williamsburg community members and included a special program for middle school students from local area schools. Aileen M. Smith flew from Japan to give the opening talk for the Muscarelle Museum exhibit mentioned above. Her talk, “Living and Working with W. Eugene Smith: Integrity, Human, and Scotch,” touched on her professional and personal relationship with the famed photographer and her collaboration with him on the Minamata photographs. The Smiths gave a face to the insidious, invisible tragedy, a face that circulated around the globe as a cover for Life magazine. As important, the audience learned that the tragedy continues for many Japanese families who are still fighting for recognition and compensation related to lingering effects of Minamata Disease. An environmental activist, Aileen Smith travels the world on behalf of the victims; at the same time she makes an effort to stay in close contact with many of the individuals. Her presentation, although focusing on the photographs and her relationship with W. Eugene Smith, made clear the importance of attention on the issue of mercury pollution, not just as a continuing scientific and health concern but also as an issue of moral responsibility. During the EXPO the William & Mary Andrews Gallery housed artwork by Lynda Wysong, an artist who also confronts environmental pollution through her sculpture and prints. Participants were free to browse this gallery and the Smith exhibit as well as watch a performance by the Virginia Theater Machine, A Mercurial Roadshow, written specifically for the EXPO. By starting a conference about global mercury pollution with a focus on art, we hoped to emphasize the value of interdisciplinary collaboration and of finding methods to translate science and health issues in ways that would be compelling for a general public. At the end of the conference one participant, an accountant and amateur bird watcher from Northern Virginia, who attended the presentations by Dave Evers, founder of the BioDiversity Research Institute, and other ornithologists commented: “When would I ever have been able to learn from these specialists? I can’t wait to get back and share what I have learned.” An Asian Studies professor joined the improvisation workshop taught by Lisa Jo Epstein, founder and artistic director of Gas & Electric Arts in Philadelphia, that focused on communicating sensitive issues.

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FIGURE 2  EXPO poster. S. Ryan Lewis (’10), Creative Services, College of William & Mary.

A panel of dentists openly discussed the controversial politics surrounding mercury dental amalgams in light of the American Dental Association’s support of their continued use. Above all, the EXPO created a space for discussing mercury pollution, one not restricted by departments, levels of professionalism, or age. The GIG goal, to emphasize the importance of communication across boundaries whether in writing, performing, creating works of art, or teaching, was met through the varied events.

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Over the three years leading up to the EXPO the mercury core met frequently, and we found ourselves actually looking forward to meetings. Gathered around a seminar table we came to expect that our discussions would spark new ways of thinking and generate ideas that we could take back to enhance our own research and teaching. At one such meeting we started bantering about the idea for a book that looks at mercury from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, a book that would reach out to an audience of teachers at all educational levels, undergraduates, representatives to community forums, public libraries, and more. Along with the EXPO the book would represent the culmination of our collective efforts to share the inspiration of our interdisciplinary collaborations. As codirectors of the GIG, Dan Cristol and I symbolized these collaborations: he was the science side whereas I represented the humanities, but we were both willing to cross academic boundaries. Dan was a driving force behind the Virginia Theater Machine’s original play and served as consultant for its scientific accuracy. He sets high professional standards for himself and his students in the classroom and lab, yet he willingly put on a fake mustache, hairnet, and apron to assume the persona of a fishmonger for the middle school field trips. Someone asked me what it had been like working with scientists. My answer: mind-expanding! Not only did I learn scientific concepts—for example, the conditions under which metal mercury becomes methylated and how mercury biomagnifies in the food chain—but also what it means to do field work and how important it is to collect accurate data. When I worked with Liz Budrionis on her video about Dan’s research at the South River, we got up at 5:30 a.m. to check bird boxes and videotape Dan and his students collecting blood and feather specimens. I learned that a person could hold a baby bird and return it to its nest without the parents abandoning it, which led to my being able to save three baby birds later in the summer. In addition, how I look at “science” changed. I learned that scientific results are not always clear-cut but often involve complex risk assessment to make decisions. Although I have recycled for more than thirty years and tried to be energy conscious, I now have a better idea why using compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs), even though they contain mercury, is better than having to build another coal-fired power plant, but we need to support proper recycling of these bulbs; one solution may create other problems to be solved. I also learned that different disciplines use the same words to mean different things: “interdisciplinary” to a scientist might mean a mixture of chemistry, biology, and geology—all sciences to me—whereas to someone in the humanities “interdisciplinary” might mean a mixture of sociology, biology, literature, art, and geology. When biologists use the word “gender” it means “sex”; whereas in the humanities we make the distinction that “sex” is biological and “gender” is socially constructed. I learned how difficult it is to communicate science to a public audience. Exciting research is taking place in William & Mary labs and in the field by our students and faculty; however, translating this information for nonscientists and the general public is a challenge. So, you might ask, how do we communicate?

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This book is an attempt to communicate beyond the walls of academia to a larger audience. Therefore, on behalf of the authors of chapters within this book and the mercury group, I invite you to explore metal mercury from the varied perspectives of history, science, sociology, government, writing, and art. Each chapter represents a disciplinary thread from the GIG. Our goal was to weave these transdisciplinary threads into a tapestry that presents a more complete picture of the effects of mercury pollution and to provide new ways to think about the environment and our individual responsibility toward each other and our earth.

Acknowledgments Without the Mercury Global Inquiry Group (GIG), this book would not exist. Many thanks go to Dr. Laurie Koloski for the GIG concept, and the Wendy and Emery Reves Center, including Judy Davis and Amy Keuneker. The Mercury GIG core participants deserve accolades: Vivian Appeler, Dan Cristol, John Drummond, Monica Griffin, Erica Holloman, Kelly Joyce, Jim Kaste, Kris Lane, Elizabeth Malcolm, Elizabeth Mead, Mike Newman, and Li Xiong (many of these names appear as chapter authors). At the same time they were teaching and researching full time, these people worked tirelessly to bring the topic of mercury pollution into an open forum. On board for specific projects were the students who worked at our sides: Liz Budrionis, Kevin Carey, Kathy Eggers, Shelley Holder, and Ashley Pierce. Other groups and individuals contributed to the EXPO and to spreading the word about mercury pollution to a general audience: the William & Mary Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC); the Committee on Sustainability (COS); the Improvisational Theatre Group; Marie Flowers and Linda Cifelli from Dental Amalgam Mercury Solutions (DAMS); the Muscarelle Museum’s Director Aaron De Groft along with Amy Gorman, coordinator of education and media, and Ursula McLaughlin-Miller, special projects administrator; and William & Mary President Taylor Reveley and the College of William & Mary administration. Special thanks go to Adam Stackhouse, without whom many of the GIG events, including the EXPO, would not have happened. In his own ranging curiosity, creativity, ability to coordinate and communicate with seemingly disparate interest groups, not to mention his videography and organizational skills, Adam represents the heart of the Mercury GIG ways of thinking and acting that transcend traditional borders. Artwork, in the form of the vibrant poster for the EXPO, as well as the maps, mercury cycle, and icons in this book, were drawn by S. Ryan Lewis (’10), working at William & Mary Creative Services (see Figures 2, 3, and 4). Elizabeth Mead deserves special recognition for her help obtaining permission to publish photographs originally used in the Muscarelle Museum exhibit that she curated as well as her artistic collaboration on the cover design. Finally, special thanks to Aileen M. Smith for permission to publish photographs taken by W. Eugene Smith and herself made available through the Aileen Archives with the help of Masako Hino. We hope that this book not only will keep attention on but also open up ways of thinking about the problems of global mercury pollution to make our world a safer place to live and work.

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The Editors As codirector of the Mercury Global Inquiry Group, Sharon L. Zuber organized faculty and student exchanges with Central China Normal University and the 2010 International Mercury EXPO, as well as mentored undergraduate student research video projects about mercury pollution. In 2006 she was invited to speak at a Symposium on Teaching and Research in Academic Writing at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. In 2008 she was area chair for “Environmental Documentaries” for the Film & History Conference. She teaches writing-intensive courses and works with faculty across the curriculum teaching freshman seminars. Her research interests focus on nonfiction writing and documentary filmmaking and include a comparison between New Journalist writers and Direct Cinema filmmakers, movements that emerged in the 1960s in the United States Her documentary films include They Live in Guinea (1996), a video about the Gloucester, Virginia, watermen; Master of the Flame (2004), a documentary about glass artist Emilio Santini; Mercury on the Move (2008), a short about the research about mercury in songbirds by Professor Daniel Cristol; and Mercury: A Hazard without Borders (2009), a film about the history and issues surrounding mercury pollution. She has published in College English, Post Script, and Film & History. Sharon L. Zuber Director, Writing Resources Center Visiting Assistant Professor, English Department and Film Studies Program College of William & Mary Williamsburg, Virginia Michael C. Newman served as dean of graduate studies in the College of William & Mary’s School of Marine Science from 1999–2002. Previously he was a faculty member at the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. His research interests include quantitative ecotoxicology, environmental statistics, risk assessment, population effects of contaminants, metal chemistry, and bioaccumulation and biomagnification modeling. In addition to more than 115 articles, he authored five books and edited another five books on these topics. A 2006 Mandarin translation of his Fundamentals of Ecotoxicology is available (Chemical Industry Press, Beijing), and a Mandarin translation of his marine risk assessment book will appear in 2011. He taught at universities throughout the world including the University of California—San Diego, University of South Carolina, University of Georgia, College of William & Mary, Jagiellonian University (Poland), University of Antwerp (Belgium), University of Joensuu (Finland), University of Technology—Sydney (Australia), University of Hong Kong, University of Koblenz-Landau (Germany), University of Xiamen (China), Huazhong Normal University (China), and Royal xxi

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Holloway University of London (UK). He served numerous international, national, and regional organizations including the Hong Kong Areas of Excellence Committee, OECD, US EPA Science Advisory Board, US EPA ECOFRAM, US EPA STAA, and the US National Academy of Science NRC. In 2004 the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry awarded him its Founder’s Award, “the highest SETAC award, given to a person with an outstanding career who has made a clearly identifiable contribution in the environmental sciences.” Michael C. Newman A. Marshall Acuff Jr. Professor of Marine Science School of Marine Science College of William & Mary Williamsburg, Virginia

Contributors Sarah Jane Brubaker teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in gender, gender and the body, medical sociology, theorizing gender violence, and sociological theory. Brubaker conducts research in the areas of adolescent sexuality and pregnancy, especially among African-American girls; girls and juvenile justice; gender violence; and medicalization. She specializes in qualitative research methods and program evaluation. Her research has been published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, Gender & Society, and Feminist Criminology. Sarah Jane Brubaker Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator of Sociology L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, Virginia John G. Drummond became part of the college’s Mercury GIG through his academic background in the humanities, vocation in technology, and good fortune. John G. Drummond Lead Engineer for Academic Information Services and Adjunct Instructor College of William & Mary Williamsburg, Virginia Irving L. “Pep” Fuller served as principal EPA negotiator for the world’s two major commercial chemicals treaties: The Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent for Banned and Severely Restricted Chemicals (PIC), and the Stockholm Convention to Phase Out the Use of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). For these and other achievements President Clinton conferred on him the rank of Meritorious Senior Executive. In 2001 he retired from government service including the United States Marine Corps, the Foreign Service, EPA and the US Trade Representative’s Office, Executive Office of the President. He lives in Deltaville, Virginia, with his wife Whitney and remains active in international trade and environment issues. Irving L. “Pep” Fuller, BA, JD, LLM Deltaville, Virgina Justin Jesty has a PhD from the University of Chicago and researches modern Japanese literature, film, and culture. Justin Jesty Seattle, Washington xxiii

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Kelly Joyce’s research focuses on the sociological dimensions of scientific knowledge and science policy. Joyce’s publications include Magnetic Appeal: MRI and the Myth of Transparency (2008) and Technogenarians: Studying Health and Illness Through an Ageing, Science, and Technology Lens (2010). Kelly Joyce Associate Professor of Sociology College of William & Mary Williamsburg, Virgina Since the early 1990s, Kris Lane has been researching and writing about the history of mining in the Americas. His most recent book is Colour of Paradise: The Emerald in the Age of Gunpowder Empires (Yale University Press, 2010). Kris Lane Professor of History College of William & Mary Williamsburg, Virginia Kenneth M.Y. Leung is an aquatic ecotoxicologist with sound knowledge in biostatistics and specialization in ecological risk assessment (ERA). Since 1999 he has published more than eighty peer-reviewed articles that are principally related to the ecology, pollution, ecotoxicology, and ERA in both marine and freshwater ecosystems. Professor Leung was recognized as one of “Ten Outstanding Young Persons” for Hong Kong in 2010. Kenneth M.Y. Leung Associate Professor School of Biological Sciences University of Hong Kong Pokfulam, Hong Kong Elizabeth Malcolm’s primary research interests are the transport and transformation of metals in the environment, with a special interest in mercury. She has been studying mercury for more than ten years, beginning as an undergraduate at Earlham College and continuing through graduate school at the University of Michigan and a postdoctorate at Princeton University. Elizabeth Malcolm Associate Professor Earth and Environmental Science Department Virginia Wesleyan College Norfolk, Virginia

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Elizabeth Mead holds an MFA from Southern Methodist University. Her sculptures and drawings have been exhibited across the United States and in Australia, England, Iceland, Japan, Korea, Portugal. and Taiwan. A recipient of the Japan/US NEA Creative Artist Fellowship, Mead spent six months in Japan where she explored space and dwelling as cultural identifiers. She was recently awarded a Nes Artist Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland, where she examined the ways environmental cues connect us to the world. She collaborates in a team-taught course about complex systems theory, network dynamics, and sculptural theory and practice. Mead received the William & Mary Alumni Teaching Fellowship Award in 2010. Elizabeth Mead Associate Professor of Art and Art History College of William & Mary Williamsburg, Virginia Christine E. Mowery has a PhD from Vanderbilt University. Her teaching and research interests include gender, social movements, aging and sexuality. She has a forthcoming co-authored chapter, “Exploring Embodied Aging and Ageism Among Old Lesbians and Gay Men” in an edited book on sexualities over the life course. Christine E. Mowery Visiting Professor of Sociology University of Richmond Richmond, Virginia Kira Obolensky is an award-winning playwright and published author of nonfiction books about architecture, including coauthor of the national bestseller The Not So Big House. Her newest play, Cabinet of Wonders: An Impossible History, is a collaboration with visual artist Irve Dell. Raskol, her adaptation of Crime and Punishment for Ten Thousand Things Theatre, is on two critics’ top ten lists for 2009; and her novella, The Anarchists Float to St. Louis, won the 2009 Quarterly West Novella Contest, judged by Padgett Powell. Obolensky has worked collaboratively with choreographers and visual artists and is cofounder of The Gymnasium, a consortium of nationally known artists, scientists, and innovators involved in the incubation of new work and ideas. She teaches at Goddard’s MFA Interdisciplinary Arts Program and at the University of Minnesota. Kira Obolensky Goddard College Plainfield, Vermont Sydney Landon Plum is the author of Solitary Goose, a collection of nature essays published by the University of Georgia Press in 2007 and nominated for an Orion Reader’s Choice Book Award. Plum has been an adjunct in the English department at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, for the past decade, and in 2009 received an

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award for outstanding teaching. Her poetry and nonfiction have been published in Prairie Schooner, South Dakota Review, Organization and Environment, ISLE, and elsewhere. She edited Coming Through the Swamp: The Nature Writings of Gene Stratton Porter. Time spent with loons on a lake in mid-coast Maine made Plum aware of the dangers of methylmercury in the environment. Sydney Landon Plum Adjunct Professor University of Connecticut, Storrs Storrs, Connecticut Clare Stankwitz became interested in the international politics of mercury pollution when she attended the twenty-fifth meeting of the UN Environment Programme’s Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environmental Forum, where world leaders first agreed to develop an international agreement on limiting anthropogenic mercury pollution. She attended this meeting as part of research through the Global Environmental Governance Project, under the direction of Dr. Maria Ivanova. Stankwitz then took a seminar at the College of William & Mary on heavy-metal contaminants and concurrently completed research on the roles of the three branches of the US federal government in US international environmental policy. Stankwitz (’11) double majored in geology and environmental policy at the College of William & Mary. Clare Stankwitz Clifton, Virginia Li Xiong’s work focuses mainly on the toxic effects and the mechanism of heavy metals and insecticides on aquatic organisms such as algae, daphnia, and fish. She has published more than thirty peer-reviewed articles that are principally related to the ecotoxicology, risk assessment, and pollution in freshwater ecosystems. Li Xiong Associate Professor College of Life Sciences Central China Normal University Wuhan, China

Key to Maps and Related Chapters Although separated by discipline-specific methods, the chapters in this book are thematically connected by the global nature of mercury pollution. The attached maps of the earth’s surface (Figures 3 and 4) attempt to identify the most prominent themes shared among chapters.

  Natural Sources Including Volcanoes, Forest Fires—Along with geothermal emissions and the slow weathering of rocks, volcanoes and forest fires are ways that mercury is naturally released into the environment. Chapters 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11.   Industrial Processes—Ever since the Industrial Revolution, humans have released more mercury into the environment than natural processes. Chapters 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and Foreword.

  Compact Fluorescent Bulbs (CFLs)—These bulbs contain mercury but reduce overall mercury omissions by decreasing the need for more coal-fired power plants. Chapter 3 and Preface.

  Mining—Whether mining cinnabar, the common mercury ore, or using liquid mercury in the process of refining precious metals, miners around the world are exposed to mercury and its toxic effects. Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11.   Tuna, Swordfish, Whale, Dolphin—High in the food chain, these creatures have high concentrations of mercury in their meat through biomagnification. Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11.

  Dentist—Dental amalgams contain mercury and have historically put hygienists as well as dentists at risk, especially if they have metal allergies. Chapters 2, 3, 4, 6, 10, and Preface.

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  Pregnant Woman—The Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration recommend that pregnant women and small children avoid eating fish that are high in mercury. Mercury can be transferred to the fetus, causing neurological harm. Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11.

  Test Tube, Computer—Careful research about mercury helps to accurately assess its risks. Chapters 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, and Foreword.

  Cameras—Through still photos, documentary films, and artistic renderings mercury pollution is made visible for a larger, public audience. Chapters 1, 8, 9, and Foreword.

  Global Treaty—Because mercury is a “hazard without borders,” all nations are working together to define its uses. Chapter 11 and Foreword.

  Writing, Computer, USA Today—Without good communication the significance of mercury research would be understood only by scientists and technologists. Reliable reporting of data is crucial to making the public aware of problems as well as informing lawmakers, politicians, and the public. Chapters 6, 7, 10.

  Mad Hatter—During the process of curing animal pelts in the 1800s, workers in the hat-making industry were exposed to toxic mercury fumes, leading to illness and even insanity. This and other industrial exposures caused many workplace poisonings across history. Chapters 1, 2, 9, 10.

  Polar Bear, Loon, Toucan—Whether far away from coal factories like the polar bear or nesting on lakes and rivers containing methylmercury, wildlife around the globe are affected by mercury pollution. Chapters 3, 4, 10.

  People Fishing, Sushi, Rice Paddy—Humans can be exposed to mercury from the food they eat, especially finfish high in the food web. Chapters 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10.

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  Scales of Justice—The legal system determines what acceptable risk is, establishes environmental laws, and legally links mercury pollution and health issues. Chapters 1, 8, 11, and Foreword.

  Kyoto Arch—Brick-red cinnabar, mercury ore, was used in architecture, jewelry, alchemy, and medicine since ancient times. Chapters 2 and 3.

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FIGURE 3  Mercury-related activities in North and South America. The circle highlights the importance of communicating scientific research to the general public. S. Ryan Lewis (’10), Creative Services, College of William & Mary.

FIGURE 4  Global activities and objects related to mercury pollution. The circle highlights how the arts, through film, can connect with a wide audience the need for global cooperation and can influence laws that might protect unborn children. S. Ryan Lewis (’10), Creative Services, College of William & Mary.

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When the Scientific Vantage Is Not Enough* Michael C. Newman

CONTENTS Introduction................................................................................................................. 1 W. Eugene Smith......................................................................................................... 3 Minamata Bay.............................................................................................................4 Minamata’s Victims....................................................................................................6 The Truth about Minamata....................................................................................... 10 The Intent of This Short Book.................................................................................. 11 References................................................................................................................. 11 Superficiality to me is untruth.... —W. Eugene Smith, Minamata

INTRODUCTION Initially intending to write an introductory chapter for this book about our collective experience with mercury from a scientist’s vantage, the familiar way for me to proceed would be to explain the ease with which mercury atoms share outer orbital electrons with other elements. This characteristic makes conversion of mercury to methylmercury easy for sulfate-reducing bacteria in sediments. The typical scientific treatment would next explain how readily methylmercury enters organisms and increases in concentration from one creature to the next in a food web until it reaches harmful concentrations in predators. Referring back to the ease with which mercury shares electrons, I would point out that this same tendency gives rise to damage in tissues, especially nervous tissues, after mercury enters the body. The resulting essay would lay out facts and details while avoiding the scientific sin of subjectivity; it would also fail wholly to describe our human experience with mercury. What vantage might I take as a scientist and educator to convey meaningful insight if not the comfortable one involving electrons, covalent bonds, oxidative stress, and neurotoxicity? One possible, but unfamiliar, approach suggested itself *

An earlier version of this article originally was published in the catalogue, Unbearable Beauty: Triumph of the Human Spirit. Photographs by W. Eugene Smith and Aileen M. Smith, on the occasion of the exhibition by the same name held at the Muscarelle Museum of Art at The College of William & Mary in Virginia, April 24–June 20, 2010.

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FIGURE 1.1  The Cape du Couedic Lighthouse, Kangaroo Island, Australia (M.C. Newman).

after a personal experience. Recently my wife and I took a tour of Australia, including a cold, rainy day trip to Kangaroo Island on the southern side of the continent. One point of interest was the Cape du Couedic Lighthouse (Figure 1.1). Built in 1909 on an isolated point of the island, this lighthouse became home for a succession of lighthouse keepers and their families. Dangerous surf and sea cliffs restricted visits, so food and essentials for keeper families were hoisted up the sea cliffs by rope and pulley every three months. Each night keepers tended the light, diligently polishing kerosene soot from its optics—optics that revolved smoothly above a reflective pool of mercury. Gossip accumulated about entire families going slowly insane from loneliness at the lighthouse. Scientific analyses have since shown that, while these families might have been lonely, the cause of the insanity was likely mercury poisoning. Staring through the rain at the Cape du Couedic Lighthouse, I tried to imagine the prolonged suffering that must have emerged in each isolated family as father, mother, and perhaps even elder children suffered the disorientation, paranoia, convulsions, and eventual dementia typical of mercury poisoning. This suffering was occurring simultaneously at the Cape Willoughby Lighthouse, elsewhere on Kangaroo Island. Indeed, similar mercury poisonings were occurring in all lighthouses using that particular Fresnel lens design. Objective speculation about mercury’s binding affinities and neurological effects was not this scientist’s first response. Such a line of thought would have utterly missed the significance of this human experience. The remarkable features that make mercury so useful—and poisonous—have given rise to many stories laid out in rich objective detail. Historical data demonstrate that our use of mercury dates back for millennia (Martinez-Cortizas et al., 1999). For example, mercury mines in Spain were active during the Roman Empire and served as a brutal means of punishing political prisoners. Convicts in the mines died of mercury poisoning within a year or two of arrival. Sir Isaac Newton’s 1693

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“year of lunacy” can be attributed to his habit of tasting mercury-rich alchemy concoctions (Broad, 1981). More recent stories provide details about the 1971–72 accidental poisoning of thousands of Iraqis, including 459 deaths, with methylmercury fungicide-coated wheat grains (Bakir et al., 1973) and the ongoing poisonings in the Brazilian Amazon from mercury used to mine gold (Malm, 1998). Presentations of facts and numbers impart accurate medical, epidemiological, or historical insight, but the human experience remains obscured in nearly all of these reports. A solely objective detailing of events cannot portray the anguish, confusion, and painful deaths of people experiencing mercury poisoning. An advocate for objectivity in science, I could only conclude that superficial objectivity was a worse sin than subjectivity in matters such as human poisonings. It would be absurd to construct a typical scientific treatment for the subject as an opening chapter of this book. Instead I choose to illustrate the influence of a nonscientific vantage by describing the extraordinarily subjective attempt of W. Eugene Smith and Aileen M. Smith (see Foreword) to communicate a watershed human experience with mercury.

W. EUGENE SMITH W. Eugene Smith (1918–78) came of age professionally while photographing humans caught on World War II Pacific island battlefields. His young Midwesterner’s world view broadened at a typical rate during his early years as a photographer in New York City, but it expanded abruptly during his wartime experience, giving rise to the extraordinary empathy so obvious in his images from that point onward. As a photojournalist he revealed the aftermath of island battles and premature deaths of young Navy pilots. His twenty-fifth birthday was spent on the carrier, Bunker Hill, where he wrote in his diary about his transformation, “My life, from the moment of my beginning photography, should have veered from much of the superfluous that I poorly recorded, and should have been dedicated to making one part of a record of the tragically momentous years dating from around 1930. I should have religiously spent my entire effort on letting deep history fall before my lens” (Hughes, 1989).* On May 22, 1945, his wartime assignment ended in Okinawa when he was wounded by mortar shrapnel. True to form, the mortar blast was captured by his camera. He spent more than a year undergoing painful surgeries and physical therapy on his hand, face, and palate. The famous photograph of his children taken while he convalesced at his Croton-on-Hudson, New York, home demonstrated that his professional transformation fully embraced the humane as well as inhumane. Taken with a still painful and scarred camera hand, it marked his post-war return to an avocation— and his profound transformation. The innocent confidence captured in The Walk to Paradise Garden† became the capstone of the renowned Family of Man collection (Steichen, 2003) and remains arguably the image for which he is best known. Unfortunately, this new passion was not the only feature he integrated into his life from the Pacific theater. He began drinking and taking amphetamines (Hughes, 1989). The alcohol remained, and Benzedrine was eventually replaced by Ritalin as he moved through life and into his final Minamata project. † The title for this photograph is often misunderstood to refer to the name of a New York garden in which it was taken. It is the title of an intermezzo from “A Village Romeo and Juliet” (Fredrick Delius, 1907) of which Smith was very fond (Hughes, 1989). *

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Smith’s compulsion was now to depict people responding to inhumane or dehumanizing events of the twentieth century. His post-war projects included photographic exposés about African-Americans of the rural South, industrialized Pittsburgh, New York City dwellers, Albert Schweitzer, and finally victims of industrial poisoning. Some projects celebrated the humane, such as his exposés about Maude Callen, a remarkable nurse–midwife serving the poor of rural South Carolina, and the simple grace of Spanish villagers living under Franco’s Fascist regime. Other projects captured starker, yet ultimately affirmative, human responses to the inhumane. During his Pittsburgh project he refined his already remarkable approach by participating actively in the depicted story (Hughes, 1989). In his own words, he was unwilling to “remain merely a ‘seeing’ photographer.” Nowhere was this clearer than in his last project (1971–73) that dealt with the accidental mercury poisoning of Japanese villagers. The Minamata project, a joint undertaking with his wife, is the watershed incident used in this opening chapter to explore our human experience with mercury.

MINAMATA BAY The people of Minamata lived for generations as a small fishing and farming community on Kyushu Island. They fished Minamata Bay each day as their community grew from town (1912) to small city (1949) (Figure 1.2). Industrial activity also emerged in Minamata with Nippon Nitrogen Fertilizer Company (later renamed Chisso Company) beginning acetaldehyde production by

FIGURE 1.2  Fishing in Minamata Bay, ca. 1972 (W. Eugene Smith, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: W. Eugene Smith Archive/Gift of Aileen M. Smith).

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mercury catalysis in 1932. Typical of the times, Chisso released waste mercury into Hyakken Harbor where it found its way to Minamata Bay. Industry and fishing continued side by side in apparent harmony until 1956. The solution to pollution was dilution. The first signs that something peculiar was occurring came from Minamata’s cats. Cats were acting oddly, displaying loping gaits. Some appeared unhinged and leapt into the sea to drown as apparent suicides. Folks gossiped about the “strange” or “waltzing cat” disease as Minamata’s cats became scarce. This curious collection of events warranting only quizzical gossip then coalesced into human tragedy. In 1956, young children began arriving at hospital with symptoms of severe neurological damage. Some were unable to walk or to speak coherently. Others convulsed uncontrollably. Explanations were desperately sought as the number of stricken children increased. Uncertainty about how contagious the disease was prompted ostracism of families with afflicted children, adding to their misery. The Smiths (Smith and Smith, 1975) relate a typical instance of ostracism of one couple as they returned home from the Minamata hospital: They had been denied all other means of transportation. They walked along the railroad tracks. … Mr. Egoshita walked a few steps ahead. On his back he carried the autopsied body of his daughter.

That same year, Dr. H. Hosokawa, a medical doctor working for Chisso, linked a fish-rich diet to the disease and also conducted experiments with cats that implicated waste mercury from Chisso as a possible cause. Soon sales of fish from the area were restricted, curtailing generations of a fishing livelihood for many families. Suspicions about the role of Chisso’s mercury waste in this outbreak created conflict between those vested in fishing and those employed by the Chisso Company. Conflict eased for a period when Chisso Company paid modest compensation to a small group of those afflicted, but a similar mercury poisoning event in Niigata stirred the growing number of diagnosed Minamata victims back to civil action. By 1968 mercury released by Chisso and consequent methylmercury accumulation in seafood was identified officially as the cause of what became known worldwide as Minamata Disease. As activists, lawyers, and government regulators began to dominate the process, families were left to cope with the human dimensions of this industrial “mistake.” In 1971 Eugene Smith and his soon-to-be wife, Aileen Mioko Sprague, left their New York loft after eviction notification. By that time Smith’s compulsive behavior and addictions had created an intermeshed series of successes and tragedies in his career, health, and personal life. Their plans to visit Japan seemed an attempt to leave behind an overburden of professional and personal issues (Hughes, 1989). Eugene and Aileen went to Japan to hang the photography exhibit, Let the Truth Be the Prejudice, in a prominent Tokyo department store. While they prepared to leave for Japan, Mr. Kazuhiko Motomura suggested that they consider photographing the human tragedy unfolding at that time in Minamata. Desirous of a new life and focus for Eugene’s energy, the nearly destitute Smiths rented a dirt-floored Minamata house and joined the fisher community (Hughes, 1989). Eugene and Aileen spent what was

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to become three years documenting the anguish and courage of the Minamata victims. They did so fully engaged in the community, even caring for young victims during brief periods of parental absence.

MINAMATA’S VICTIMS The first and most obvious victims were children poisoned in their mother’s womb. Mercury in seafood eaten by mothers had passed across the placenta and into cells destined to become nerves of the developing children. Hundreds of babies were born with irreparable damage to their nervous systems. Eugene Smith recollected about their first visit to one young victim’s home “We were driving to the village of Akasaki, and dreams flickered in my mind of buying a home here. The illusion ended when we entered the home of Takako Isayama, who was born wrenched from normality, condemned to convulsions and to helplessness” (Smith and Smith, 1975; Figure 1.3).* As Takako lay “twisted on the floor,” the Smiths listened to her parents explain the legal nuance according to which their daughter might not be considered a victim because she was born in 1961. The official stance locked the number of victims at the first 121 diagnosed by setting 1960 as the year that the poisonings ended.† Their daughter was placed onto the unofficial list of those referred to as the lost victims (Smith and Smith, 1975). It is difficult to imagine the emotions that her parents must have felt as they dealt simultaneously with such legal absurdities and the unrelenting needs of their daughter. Although congenital mercury poisoning was the first acknowledged manifestation of the outbreak, young and old also experienced mercury’s impact. Methylmercury poisoned Minamata residents by insidiously destroying already formed nervous tissue including that of the brain itself. Poisoning occurred at a slower pace but with similarly destructive consequences. Mature brain cells were altered irreparably. Ion transport mechanisms crucial for nerve impulses of mature brain cells were damaged. The molecules of which nerve cells are made were destroyed by oxyradicals generated by mercury. Mercury even confused the normal signaling within cells, causing many nerve cells—like Minamata’s cats—to commit suicide (Reardon and Bhat, 2007). Nerve damage and cell death manifested themselves in many ways including muscle weakness, tremors, inability to walk or move normally, damage to vision and hearing, disorientation, and death. The Smiths visited once-healthy young children who became what they referred to as “still-born adults.” Mature adults became afflicted too. Yahei and Natsue Ikeda, shown in a series of the Smiths’ 1972 photographs (Figure 1.4), were designated official Minamata victims in 1971.

Eugene Smith himself was attacked physically and temporarily blinded by angry factory workers for his intense persistence in depicting the tragic truths of the Minamata victims. The last period of his time in Minamata was filled with his own physical pain due to these injuries. Aileen quickly learned to capture remarkable images when it became too painful for Eugene to operate his cameras (Hughes, 1989). † A water treatment “Cyclator” was installed by Chisso in 1959, although it is questionable whether it was functional at installation (Smith and Smith, 1975). Further, enough mercury had been released into the bay by 1959 that it would have taken a very long time for the bay to return to normality. *

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FIGURE 1.3  Takako Isayama and Her Mother, ca. 1972 (W. Eugene Smith, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: W. Eugene Smith Archive/Gift of Aileen M. Smith).

This recognition followed thirteen years of increasingly severe illness and debilitation of Yahei. Natsue was able to help him about their home but lost this ability soon after the 1972 images were captured (Smith and Smith, 1975). Since the Ikedas were initially very vocal in their skepticism of neighbors who claimed to be poisoning victims, their suffering extended outward into the community. “Not only did the poison corrode living cells, it insinuated itself into relationships between neighbors” (Smith and Smith, 1975). Soon there were families in which several or all members were poisoning victims. The Smiths report that, as public awareness of the Minamata tragedy grew, homes of victims such as the Ikedas’ became regular stops in “the parade of politicians and government environmentalists” (Smith and Smith, 1975). Interactions between the Minamata victims and the Chisso Company became so unsatisfactory that a Central Pollution Board was established in 1970 to decide issues, especially those pertaining to the lost victims (Figure 1.5). A few board decisions seemed to closely reflect the opinions of Chisso, and this further divided the community (Smith and Smith, 1975). Some victims decided to pursue legal liability claims outside of the framework crafted by the board. A Fishermen’s Union became involved with the confrontation. Families even brought their stricken members to the board meetings to remind board members of the real issue being confronted in Minamata. The stream of reporters and photographers into Minamata was constant and heavy. Factions formed within the Minamata community. Reading the Smiths’ Minamata book reveals labels such as the “old victims,” “lost victims,” “leave it up to others,” and “make Minamata brighter” groups. The victims seemed to become secondary

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FIGURE 1.4  Mr. and Mrs. Ikeda, ca. 1972 (W. Eugene Smith, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: W. Eugene Smith Archive/Gift of Aileen M. Smith).

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FIGURE 1.5  Members of the Central Pollution Board 1972 (W. Eugene Smith, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: W. Eugene Smith Archive/Gift of Aileen M. Smith).

to causes and group opinions as disparate interests jockeyed for position and litigation dragged on. The head of one victimized family commented, “All this idealism about crusading ‘for the world,’ and so on. ... Hell, I took Chisso to court because this disease wrecked my family” (Smith and Smith, 1975). As the Minamata situation drew international attention, the Smiths’ focus remained steadfastly on individuals. The 1972 picture of Shinobu Sakamoto and her mother, taken as they waited for a train on their way to a United Nations meeting on the environment, exemplified the commitment to the personal tragedy (Figure 1.6). Shinobu’s dress carries a protest message intended for the public; however, in Smith’s photograph, this message is dwarfed by that conveyed in Shinobu’s facial expression and posture—and her mother’s handkerchief. Shinobu was born in 1956, the same year her three-year old sister, Mayumi, died from mercury poisoning. Shinobu herself showed symptoms of in utero mercury poisoning within months of birth. Adding to her unresolvable difficulties and discomfort, she became to the press what the Smiths called “the maimed-but-struggling victim.” Equally discomforting to victims such as Shinobu was the uncertainty about what would happen when the public’s gaze inevitably shifted elsewhere to leave them alone with their handicaps (Smith and Smith, 1975). I went to Stockholm because I wanted everyone to know. Many people have never seen someone like me. ... I’m glad I went. Many people stared at me too, but I think the people understood a bit. My mother said so too. She told me so crying. Shinobu Sakamoto (1972), Quoted in Smith and Smith (1975)

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FIGURE 1.6  Shinobu and her mother preparing to leave the Minamata train station for the United Nations Environmental Conference in Stockholm, Sweden, 1972 (W. Eugene Smith, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: W. Eugene Smith Archive/Gift of Aileen M. Smith).

THE TRUTH ABOUT MINAMATA Along with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the Smiths’ Minamata images wrenched our collective attention away from the benefits of giddy industrialization, revealing the blatantly unacceptable human consequences of pollution. The Smiths ended their Minamata volume speculating: Historians might find in Minamata … —if humankind ever decides to assume true responsibility for its stewardship of this planet—that they are looking back into a kind

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When the Scientific Vantage Is Not Enough of soul-force of courage, a force that might save our children from the plunders that began with the first industrial revolution. Smith and Smith (1975)

Such idealistic musings skirt the human truth of Minamata. The Smiths’ images documented with subjective clarity the wrenched lives and wrecked families caused by mercury. The Smiths’ short marriage broke apart under the intense effort and stress associated with finishing the Minamata collection. Eugene Smith’s health deteriorated, and three years after the volume’s publication he died at the age of fifty-nine. He never witnessed the transformative impact of his images, nor did he live to understand his contribution to creating our present environmental ethos. He could not have known that this ethos would give rise to new fields of environmental science and extensive pollution legislation. However, unquestionably, he understood the human truth about Minamata.

THE INTENT OF THIS SHORT BOOK Hopefully this brief exposé about Eugene and Aileen Smith’s Minamata photojournalism makes clear that our experience with mercury is much broader than our scientific knowledge of its chemistry and biological effects. It is the goal of this book to purposely step out of the conventional scientific framework for treating mercury pollution and to explore the wider human experience with mercury. As expressed in the opening quote for this chapter, to produce a technically rich book that only superficially mentions other features of our experience with mercury would result in an untruthful exploration of this important issue.

REFERENCES Bakir, Fatih, Salem F. Damluji, L. Amin-Zaki, M. Murtadha, A. Khalidi, N.Y. Al-Rawi, S. Tikriti, H.I. Dhahir, T.W. Clarkson, J.C. Smith, and R.A. Doherty. 1973. Methylmercury poisoning in Iraq. Science, 181:230–241. Broad, William J. 1981. Sir Isaac Newton: Mad as a hatter? Science, 213:1341–1344. Hughes, Jim 1989. W. Eugene Smith: Shadow & Substance. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing. Malm, Olaf 1998. Gold mining as a source of mercury exposure in the Brazilian Amazon. Environmental Research, Section A, 77:73–78. Martinez-Cortizas, A., X. Pontevedra-Pombal, E. Garcia-Rodeja, J.C. Novoa-Munoz, and W. Shotyk. 1999. Mercury in a Spanish peat bog: Archive of climate change and atmospheric metal deposition. Science, 284:939–942. Reardon, Ann Marie, and Hari K. Bhat. 2007. Methylmercury neurotoxicity: Role of oxidative stress. Toxicological & Environmental Chemistry, 89:535–54. Smith, W. Eugene, and Aileen M. Smith. 1975. Minamata. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Steichen, Edward. (2003). The Family of Man. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.

2 Mercury in Human History Dangerous Attractions Kris Lane CONTENTS Introduction............................................................................................................... 13 Mercury’s Ancient Uses............................................................................................ 15 Mercury-Based Pigments..................................................................................... 15 Mercury-Based Medicines................................................................................... 16 The Age of Alchemy................................................................................................. 17 Ancient Alchemy.................................................................................................. 18 Early Modern Alchemy and the Rise of Chemistry............................................. 18 Mining Mercury........................................................................................................ 19 Mining Hazards....................................................................................................20 Refining Hazards.................................................................................................. 21 An American Amalgamation Revolution.................................................................. 22 Mercury in Spanish America’s First Great Mining Cycle.................................... 22 Mercury in Spanish America’s Late Colonial Revival......................................... 23 Mercury in the California Gold Rush and Western US Bonanzas....................... 23 Industry’s Call...........................................................................................................24 Scientific Instruments...........................................................................................25 Lighting, Switches, and Batteries........................................................................25 From Industrial Handmaiden to Angel of Death..................................................26 The Price of Power.................................................................................................... 27 The Age of Activism................................................................................................. 27 Premodern Concerns Regarding Mercury Hazards..............................................28 Modern Activism vs. Mercury Pollution.............................................................. 28 Conclusion................................................................................................................30 Bibliography............................................................................................................. 31 Hg, from the Latin hydrargyrum/Greek hydrargyros = “liquid metal” —Oxford English Dictionary

INTRODUCTION Demonized as an insidious toxicant today, mercury (element 80 on the periodic table) was not always feared and hated. Indeed, throughout most of human history this ambivalent, seemingly liminal substance and its compounds were highly 13

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prized. Archaeological remains and other sources make clear that mercury-based pigments, as well as medicinal preparations, were used for thousands of years across much of the globe. Elemental mercury figured, too, in several venerable forms of artistic decoration, such as gilding, and more secretively in alchemical experimentation, either to transmute base metals into silver and gold or to discover an elixir of eternal life. Although mercury’s natural attraction to gold, silver, copper, and tin was known for millennia, only after the discovery of massive silver deposits in what are today Mexico and Bolivia around 1550 did mercury’s use expand to near-industrial scale. It was also after 1550 that mercury began to be shipped globally in large quantities for the purpose of amalgamation, a method of extracting precious metals from their ores by treatment with mercury to form an alloy. Thanks to Spain’s access to rich mercury deposits in southern Castile and highland Peru, as well as in Habsburg Slovenia, amalgamation was the standard refining practice throughout colonial and early national Spanish America. After the 1849 California gold rush and subsequent booms in western US, Australian, Canadian, and South African mining, California mercury, found near San José, became the solvent of choice until new processes sharply reduced its use around 1900. Even so, small-scale gold miners continue to practice mercury amalgamation throughout the world and into the twenty-first century, contributing as much as one-third of total global mercury pollution. In addition to mining and refining, after 1850 mercury became a significant industrial ingredient, for example in explosives and mirror manufacture, as well as in synthetic fiber production. Mercury-based medicines and bleaching agents also sold well into the twentieth century, and silver–mercury amalgam became the standard means of filling tooth cavities with the rise of modern dentistry. After World War II, and especially after widespread anti-nuclear protests in the 1970s and 1980s, coal-fired power plants became the major source of humanproduced mercury in the atmosphere. Once released by combustion and carried by winds and ocean currents, trace amounts of mercury from coal began to concentrate in many of the world’s remotest ecosystems, far away from mines or factories. Other anthropogenic (human-caused) sources of mercury pollution include garbage incineration and deforestation. Although humans have long been aware of mercury’s toxicity, only in recent times have scientists and policymakers made a conscious effort to evaluate mercury’s spread on a global scale and begin to reduce its unwitting release. This reversal is quite recent in terms of human history and would seem a major awakening. Still, in an age of pressing and even compounding environmental concerns, keeping mercury pollution a top priority has been difficult despite well-publicized mass poisonings such as the one that occurred not long after World War II in and around Japan’s Minamata Bay and another in Iraq in the early 1970s. In recent years growing levels of mercury in fish seem to be a stronger spur to action than past, localized disasters or documented poisonings of wildlife. European countries have taken the lead in banning industrial uses of mercury and also mercury exports, but whether mercury controls invite greater global cooperation than those surrounding climate change remains to be seen.

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MERCURY’S ANCIENT USES Usually found on the earth’s surface in its sulfide form as deep-red cinnabar crystals, elemental mercury was probably a rarer find for ancient humans than meteoric iron. Although scattered throughout the earth’s crust, mercury sulfide only rarely occurs in high enough concentrations to be mined and refined. As an example of this rarity, much of the world’s mercury now circulating in raw elemental form was produced by a single deposit in south–central Spain: Almadén in Don Quixote’s fabled hills of La Mancha. Other concentrated sources have been found in Slovenia, China, Peru, and California, but none has proved as important or venerable as Almadén. Prior to human involvement with mercury, nature had its own methods of redistribution or concentration. Most mercury emitted into the atmosphere and waterways came from volcanic and geothermal sources, plus surface erosion by wind, rain, frost, and other mechanical and chemical processes. It would be interesting to attempt to create a current world mercury budget to compare with a prehuman one, perhaps by searching core sediment samples for changes. Core sampling in remote lakes has already produced some surprising results for the ancient Americas. Mercury has always been an element related to human life, but to what degree have humans altered its dispersal across millennia, and to what effect?

Mercury-Based Pigments Mercury sulfide, or cinnabar, is a dense, crystalline mineral with a bright red color that in the Western world came to be known as vermillion. Vermillion oil paints made from cinnabar were in common use until the late twentieth century, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries British firms such as the Hudson’s Bay and Northwest Companies traded vermillion face paint to the many native peoples of North America for beaver pelts, deerskins, and other forest products. This face paint may sound dangerous, but in the form of vermillion ointment, mercury was not especially toxic unless it entered open wounds or was burned, releasing dangerous fumes. Much more troubling was European hat makers’ use of mercury salts to treat the beaver pelts produced by this trade. Some hatters, such as those in Lewis Carroll’s hometown, allegedly went mad after vaporizing mercury in the felting process. Even in its sulfide form, mercury readily attaches itself to gold, silver, copper, and tin. It forms a chemical bond and acts as a solvent. Given these facts, it is understandable that powdered cinnabar and vermillion paste were used to paint objects made of these metals. Indeed, such objects have been found in archaeological sites from ancient China to the Andes. In Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia many gold, silver, and copper-alloy masks and similar artifacts dating to the first centuries of the Common Era show traces of cinnabar. In pre-Columbian times most South American cinnabar likely originated in the mountains east of Lima at a site called Huancavelica, later exploited by the Spanish (See Figure 2.1). Cinnabar from lesser deposits in Mexico, Guatemala, and elsewhere was also traded widely, but only in places where urban cultures left substantial traces has it been routinely found. Artifacts in Mexico bearing traces of cinnabar suggest that the pigment was well known far beyond its source regions, but no source was

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FIGURE 2.1  The mercury mines and refineries of Huancavelica, Peru. In this eighteenthcentury schematic, mine shafts seem to connect to churches in a topsy-turvy landscape. Below are the characteristic earthenware condensing jars used to recover liquid mercury from heated cinnabar. Courtesy of the Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain.

as concentrated as that of Huancavelica in Peru. Mexico’s cinnabar deposits were thoroughly explored in colonial times, but never proved economical for mercury production. Similar cinnabar traces have been found on ancient artifacts from the Medit­ erranean, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, mostly derived from Spanish and perhaps also Slovenian cinnabar. By itself or mixed with oils and other substances, cinnabar was used to decorate walls, ceramics, textiles, and the human body. As a chemically stable sulfide pigment, mercury’s toxicity was relatively minor.

Mercury-Based Medicines Until recent times, most humans believed that sickness was caused by either the presence or absence of poison in the body or an imbalance in a sort of fluid budget. Acts of witchcraft were described in these terms in many world cultures—victims were poisoned, or made to “dry up.” A wide range of therapies were thus developed with the aim of detoxifying the patient or restoring the balance of “humors,” which in the Western tradition included blood, black bile, choler (yellow bile), and phlegm. Balance was also figured in terms of hot/cold, dry/wet, and other paired extremes that could vary according to age, gender, and personal temperament—partly determined by one’s astrological sign. The physician’s or healer’s role was to diagnose types of poisoning and specific imbalances, then to prescribe and apply the proper medicaments to detoxify and restore the individual patient’s normal “humoral” balance.

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We do not know about mercury in medicine in the ancient Americas or subSaharan Africa, but therapies throughout Eurasia tended to use mercury in two ways: externally, usually as a caustic sublimate to treat wounds and infections, and internally, as a means of encouraging salivation to restore humoral balance. In Taoist, and to a greater degree Ayurvedic, medicine that prevailed in India and parts of East and Southeast Asia, mercury use became overtly mystical, associated (wrongly one must presume) with immortality. In some Ayurvedic texts, mercury is associated with the highest ranks of godhead and serves as a kind of elixir. We may think this absurd, but mercury’s power derived in large part from its dangers. How did ancient healers obtain liquid mercury? As nature would have it, mercury is released from cinnabar at relatively low temperatures (c. 360°C), and thus it was not long before curious artisans or tinkerers learned to trap and condense its vapors and produce pure quicksilver. Inhaled mercury vapor is highly toxic, and presumably some early experimenters discovered this the hard way, losing their teeth, salivating heavily, and suffering temporary paralysis and blindness, if not death. Liquid mercury is far less toxic but is easily blended with salts to form caustic as well as violently poisonous compounds. Some of these compounds, such as the paste called “Soliman,” or “Turkish ointment,” served as astringents and antiseptics and were carried in soldiers’ medical kits from before the era of the Crusades. After Columbus’s voyages, Turkish ointment was also used to treat syphilis sores. At the other end of the spectrum “corrosive sublimate,” or mercury chloride, was widely known to be a deadly poison. As these several health-related uses of mercury derived in part from alchemical experimentation and the search for elixirs of youth, we shall turn next to this, mercury’s most mysterious historical chapter. It should be kept in mind that mercurybased medicines were widely used until the mid-twentieth century, and some quite effective ones are still being developed. In this sense, mercury’s twin abilities to poison and heal render it the archetypal pharmakon—a most ambivalent and, by some accounts, still magical substance.

THE AGE OF ALCHEMY As far as we know, most premodern humans believed that metals were some kind of divine residue. In the ancient Andes, gold was described as “sweat of the sun” and silver as “tears of the moon.” Many cultures also believed that transforming metals from their raw (native) or ore forms into workable materials was a sacred task, to be performed by chosen individuals or clans. Almost worldwide, meteoric iron, as well as native gold, silver, or copper, figured in both cosmology and material culture. (Historians later assigned “metallic” ages to various civilizations, e.g., bronze, iron, gold, gilded, etc.) In general, as the late historian of religions Mircea Eliade and others have noted, the esoteric skills required in processing and manipulating metals were not only assigned spiritual significance but also were often carried out in great secrecy. In some places, notably parts of sub-Saharan Africa, metalworking was monopolized by powerful clans who tended also to control trade networks for metal tools or currency. Similar mystery surrounded metallurgy in other cultures,

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most notably in Eurasia. Here mercury, since it was capable of transforming or at least combining with the precious metals, was quickly drawn into the secretive metalworker’s kit.

Ancient Alchemy As it is liquid at room temperature, mercury was not widely considered a metal, at least in ancient Eurasia, but rather an ambivalent substance possessing select metallic properties, such as density and brilliant, reflective color. Mercury’s affinity with gold, copper, silver, and tin led some experimenters to believe it was an ingredient in these metals’ constitution. In Western alchemical thinking—which contrary to popular belief was not simply an obsessive, futile quest to transmute base metals into noble ones—mercury and sulfur, which also displayed ready affinity for all but gold, were the constituent “elements” of all metals; each metal was a discrete combination of the two as rendered intractable to humans by fickle nature or patron deities. The actions of various acids on the metals were also well known from an early date, and the philosopher’s stone was part formula for transmutation (key to wealth and power), part formula for the elixir of life (key to immortality). Alchemy’s philosophical underpinnings could be said to match well with mercury’s own “chemotherapeutic” ambivalence: what cures also kills. Alchemical treatises were produced in many ancient cultures in Eurasia, from China to the circum-Mediterranean, and in every case mercury was a key component, usually part of the tria prima with sulfur and salt. Judged as inscrutable by many later chemists, these treatises often resorted to esoteric language and a wide range of bizarre symbols, including hermaphrodites, “squared circles,” and so on. Alchemical symbolism related to religious or mystical concepts had nothing directly to do with the chemical properties of mercury or other metals, and thus won the opprobrium of both orthodox religious and enlightenment critics. Others disagreed. In the twentieth century, the psychologist Carl Jung, an early disciple of Freud, considered classical alchemical writings as a kind of key to the human mind and social relations.

Early Modern Alchemy and the Rise of Chemistry In the traditional Scientific Revolution narrative (admittedly much revised nowadays), modern chemistry arose like a phoenix from alchemy’s ashes. Beginning in the sixteenth century, alchemy came to be associated with greed and ignorance, denounced as sinful by preachers and stupid by practical renaissance men such as the German metallurgist Georgius Agricola. Especially in Protestant Europe, a movement was afoot in favor of direct observation and scrupulous experimentation. Received wisdom, however old, ought to be tested, even overturned, by employing improved technologies in metallurgy and optics, freely exchanging information in print, and unabashedly seeking to unlock nature’s secrets. Alchemy’s secrecy and mystification flew in the face of this trend and even in the Catholic world, princes who clung to alchemical notions suffered censure by the Inquisition. The scientific method, which required that an experiment be repeatable by anyone following the proper recipe, seemed poised to spell alchemy’s doom.

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Interestingly, many seventeenth-century metallurgists, including the priest Alvaro Alonso Barba of Potosí, and even Sir Isaac Newton, who was briefly employed in England’s royal mint, tried to follow a middle path. They believed that the massive corpus of alchemical texts bequeathed to them by posterity could not all be wrong. Experimentation and observation were required to make advances, as both admitted freely, and received wisdom had to be tested, but much was to be learned from the alchemists’ millennia of tinkering. Barba’s work in Potosí, a famous silver-mining town in what is today Bolivia, reveals a deep fascination with mercury, with which he had unusually copious experience, but also a considerable practical knowledge of its properties under many conditions and in many combinations. Barba cited key alchemical authorities such as Raymond Llull in his c.1627 treatise The Art of Metals, and as a result saw his work suppressed by the Inquisition. In faraway North America, the Harvard-educated metallurgist George Starkey, one of Barba’s contemporaries (although Barba did not apparently know Starkey’s work), remained by contrast “stuck in the past.” His widely read works were far less practical in tone and bore few traces of the emerging scientific skepticism made popular by Francis Bacon. Even Newton, working at the end of the seventeenth century, lacked much of the practical knowledge and willingness to assert new ideas typical of the Catholic priest and inveterate “lab rat” Barba. Newton was heavily influenced by Starkey. By the early eighteenth century, European tinkerers and scientists began to notice that more than the seven sacred metals (each associated with a celestial body and divinity) were in existence. Bismuth was an early challenger, but since it was difficult to refine, it was only with the discovery of South American platinum around 1750 that major experimentation with metals led to the breakthrough in taxonomy— and understanding—required for the development of modern chemistry. The new taxonomy at last identified mercury as but one of many metals that, despite natural combinations with other substances, could be reduced to discrete, “immutable” elements. Alchemical claims of a metallic continuum, or spectrum, were finished when in the 1780s Lavoisier used Priestly’s newly discovered element of oxygen to create a torch powerful enough to fuse platinum. Suddenly it seemed as if all metals, mercury being only one of many, had been tamed by the handiwork and ingenuity of determined and intelligent mortals. Mercury was thoroughly demystified; humans were finally in control. Or so it seemed. Worldwide, mercury continued to be mined and applied to medicine and industry, most importantly the refining of Spanish American silver.

MINING MERCURY Mercury’s occurrence in the earth’s crust is about 0.07–0.08 parts per million, close to that of silver. Like silver, mercury is rare enough that it can only be profitably mined in concentrated deposits, usually massive sulfides. Ancient deposits of cinnabar were exploited in many parts of the world, but significant concentrations were limited. Mercury mining, or rather the mining and processing of cinnabar, is best documented for Almadén, Spain (see Figure 2.2), although equally ancient deposits in China were likely exploited on a considerable scale.

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FIGURE 2.2  Mercury as Royal Treasure. This late eighteenth-century watercolor depicts the new refinery complex at Almadén, Spain, including the building at front (d), the “Royal Storehouse in which the mercury is safeguarded with many locks.” Courtesy of the Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain.

The mercury mines of North America seem to have been only lightly exploited before Europeans arrived, amounting to little more than surface collection of cinnabar. Recent studies of lake deposits near Huancavelica, Peru, suggest substantial cinnabar mining in pre-Columbian times, but the extent of liquid mercury production is unknown. Spanish mercury production, by contrast, is well documented. It rose rapidly in Roman times, when mining was a major occupation throughout the Iberian Peninsula. Despite the presence of considerable gold and silver deposits in Spain, however, we have no evidence of Roman employment of large-scale mercury amalgamation in recovering these metals. Recovering gold dust by gravitational methods with water was instead common in the north, at Las Médulas, and recovering silver and copper by smelting was common in the south, at Rio Tinto and other sites.

Mining Hazards Mining mercury, or rather cinnabar, presents a range of health hazards. First, it shares with other types of mining the possibilities of death or injury from falls, caveins, foul air, explosions, flooding, and other objective dangers. Worse, according to historian Kendall Brown and others who have examined manuscript records, was the effect of breathing cinnabar dust. Since mercury’s bond with sulfur is weak, chipping or blasting cinnabar yields a mix of finely vaporized mercury and sharp crystal shards, both of which hang in the air in the limited spaces typical of underground mines. Constant inhalation of these mercury-rich particles usually led to an ailment combining characteristics of emphysema and partial paralysis. Acute mercury poisoning from mine work caused hair and tooth loss, reduced vision, insomnia, heavy salivation, and tremors. Due to these extra hazards, few miners volunteered to extract or process cinnabar, and most premodern mines and refineries were staffed by coerced workers, including slaves and convicts. In Spain convicts faced the galleys, service in the sun-baked fortresses of North Africa, or the mercury mines of Almadén (see Figure 2.3).

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FIGURE 2.3  A World Going On Underground. This late-eighteenth-century image showcases Spain’s Almadén mercury mines’ newly improved shaft and adit system, complete with integrated, human-powered drainage pumps. Most workers were condemned convicts. Courtesy of the Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain.

Refining Hazards Refining mercury from cinnabar was perhaps equally hazardous, as it entailed heating the excavated mineral in furnaces and reducing the vaporized mercury to liquid by condensation. Even using the very best modern equipment, containing mercury vapor is difficult, but in early modern times, the use of poorly sealed stone ovens and ceramic condensing vessels meant that substantial mercury was released into open air where it was no doubt inhaled by refinery workers and neighbors. Apparently cognizant of this problem, the owners and contractors responsible for Spain’s mercury mines lived at considerable distance from the refineries. Once refined, mercury from Spain, Peru, and Slovenia was packaged in flasks and skins, then crated for carriage by cart, mule, or even llama. Mercury was valuable enough to be monopolized by the Spanish crown beginning in the sixteenth century, partly in hopes of keeping tabs on silver refiners by calculating consumption. Spain proved too profligate with its reserves, however, and magistrates periodically auctioned the exclusive rights to mine and distribute Almadén’s and then Huancavelica’s bounty to bidders, most famously the Fugger family of Augsburg in southern Germany. Ships carrying mercury regularly crossed the Atlantic, mostly to supply the mines of Mexico, but also those of Honduras and New Granada (modern Colombia), and some of these vessels were wrecked in the Caribbean, leaving behind still-visible pools of mercury among the coral reefs.

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AN AMERICAN AMALGAMATION REVOLUTION The year 1554 marked a major turning point in the global history of mercury. In this year, a merchant from Seville, Bartolomé de Medina, developed a process for amalgamating silver ores in Pachuca, Mexico, a dusty camp not far from Mexico City. Medina’s method, eventually expanded into what became known as the “patio process,” was adopted throughout Spanish America and used until the nineteenth century. It allowed for finely crushed silver ores to be refined over the course of many days by the timed and measured addition of salts and mercury. Amalgamation itself was not new, but this innovative series of steps was. The mix was stirred by indigenous workers and mules, aided by solar energy, and eventually the resulting amalgam was separated from waste mineral to be washed and fired to yield nearly pure silver “sponges,” which were then refired and poured into bar molds. Medina’s innovation was especially important in the mining districts of Mexico and the Andes in that it required far less fuel than smelting, which sped deforestation. Again, mercury’s use had two sides: it saved trees while yielding silver, yet it also poisoned workers and animals and fouled air and streams.

Mercury in Spanish America’s First Great Mining Cycle Medina’s discovery quickly transformed Mexico into a significant world producer of silver, but it was distant Potosí in what is today highland Bolivia that most benefited in the shorter term. After about 1570, the recently discovered mercury of Huancavelica, Peru, was applied to the rich silver ores of Potosí in what officials described as a Godgiven “marriage.” By the 1590s amalgamation yielded tens of millions of ounces of silver annually, and by 1610 Potosí was home to well over 100,000 people, making it one of the Western world’s largest cities. Given the fact that mercury vapor was being pumped into the air almost constantly, along with lead, zinc, and many other toxic substances, Potosí was likely among the world’s most polluted cities as well. Today historical archaeologists have resisted the temptation to dig sites in the old colonial city thanks to visible layers of mercury and other metals in the soil. It was here in Potosí that the priest Alvaro Alonso Barba tried numerous recipes aimed at 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1500

1550

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FIGURE 2.4  Production figures in thousands of quintals, for Almadén, Idria, and Huancavelica (1570–1810).

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recovering more silver and losing less mercury, all recorded in his learned treatise, The Art of Metals. Once Potosí’s deposits began to play out in the early seventeenth century, Spanish attention shifted back to Mexico, where the old silver districts of Pachuca, Taxco, Zacatecas, and Guanajuato were revived thanks to new investment and improved infrastructure. New mines were also opened at San Luis Potosí, Real del Monte, Parral, and Chihuahua. Critical to all of these mining ventures was the mercury of Spain’s mines of Almadén, shipped annually across the Atlantic and carried overland by mule. In Mexico the “patio process” was expanded in scale and adapted to different types of ores. Tens of millions of coins minted from Mexican silver soon became the basis for many world currencies, including the US dollar and Chinese yuan.

Mercury in Spanish America’s Late Colonial Revival Due to population decline and played-out deposits, Spanish America’s mining industry faced many difficulties in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Crown supplies of mercury from Almadén, Idria, and Huancavelica all sputtered, and many ships were lost to pirates and privateers. In some places miners and refiners took to smelting. What turned around this decline in the mining industry was a series of reforms initiated by Spain’s new Bourbon monarchs and their ministers, all of them inspired by the Enlightenment and Louis XIV’s notions of absolutism. Spain’s centralizing kings devoted much attention to expanding and rationalizing the mining industry as a means of meeting ballooning military expenditures. Mercury, a crown monopoly, was key. The result of mining and refining reforms established by the Bourbons, beginning with Philip V (1700–1746) and continuing through the reign of Charles IV (1788– 1808), was renewed output of mercury, especially at Almadén, but more importantly a huge revival of the silver mining industry, from northernmost Mexico to Chile. By the time Napoleon’s forces invaded Spain and removed Charles IV from power, Mexico alone was minting nearly 20 million “silver dollars” a year. Its price reduced, thanks to crown intervention, mercury was consumed at a higher rate than ever. However, a literal cloud of mercury vapor settled over the famed silver cities of Spanish America. Thus, in generating a huge portion of the world’s money supply, generations of poor workers and their families, most of them Native Americans, absorbed this unwitting “cost” of production, and many generations of enslaved Africans suffered from work in the refineries and mints.

Mercury in the California Gold Rush and Western US Bonanzas Just as California was being incorporated into US territory following the invasion of Mexico in 1846, major cinnabar deposits were found just south of San José. The mines were called New Almadén, and a later find was called New Idria. The finds were soon overshadowed by the historic discovery of gold not far away at Sutter’s Mill near Sacramento, but the discovery of mercury in California, so close to major precious metals deposits, was to prove extraordinarily important for the development of the mining industry in the western United States. Following a modified and greatly expanded version of the Spanish “patio process,” North American miners

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and refiners soon applied New Almadén and New Idria’s mercury to the massive silver ore deposits of the Comstock on the California–Nevada border, then to the many silver ores of Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, and other mountain states. California mercury production rose so quickly that it overshadowed production in Spain and Slovenia, both of which in the mid-nineteenth century were monopolized by the Rothschild family. The Huancavelica deposits in Peru were in such decline that mercury from California was exported to aid silver refiners in Peru and Bolivia as well as the much nearer mines of Mexico. Conditions in New Almadén were never so bad as at Huancavelica under the Spanish, but mineworkers and refiners, many of them Mexican–Americans, suffered the characteristic symptoms of mercury poisoning consistent with their trade. As always, cinnabar dust in the mines and mercury vapor in the refineries were the main culprits. Around the turn of the twentieth century, mercury stopped being a major refining ingredient in precious metals production. Chemists and other scientists had at last developed industrial-scale alternatives, the most important of them using sodium cyanide to dissolve gold. Cinnabar deposits were one by one abandoned worldwide by the 1990s (with the possible exception of China). As of this writing, considerable mercury is produced as a byproduct of large-scale gold mining, which has expanded tremendously in tandem with the global economic crisis. In an ironic twist, given the history of mercury just recounted, modern industrial gold processing requires no mercury, but instead yields it. The story does not end there: Since the 1930s, small-scale gold miners have been continuing to amalgamate gold (and to a lesser degree silver) ores, fouling air and streams and poisoning many people along the way. They have not done so on purpose, but with every gold price spike, as occurred in the late 1970s and late 2000s, mercury consumption by small-scale gold miners, particularly in developing countries but even in the United States and Canada, has spiked with it. In another irony many of these miners buy their mercury from wholesalers who purchase it from first-world recyclers of batteries and other industrial junk.

INDUSTRY’S CALL With the rise of modern chemistry a great variety of new uses for mercury were discovered. Dense and not liable to evaporation, freezing, or corrosion under ordinary circumstances, mercury proved ideal for making thermometers and barometers. Mercury is also a conductor and was soon adapted for use in switches, particularly thermostats. A major breakthrough occurred in the 1890s when scientists discovered that mercury vapor could produce significant light when sealed in a vacuum tube and charged. Industrial production of such vapor-filled tubes began in the late 1930s and as a result fluorescent lights, far more efficient than their incandescent ancestors, became standard after World War II. Fluorescent household lighting was generally resisted for aesthetic reasons until a new generation of bulbs, popularized by huge chain stores, became available around the year 2000. Some environmental activists have hailed fluorescent lighting for its relative efficiency, but little attention has been

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paid to proper disposal of bulbs. In industry, as in medicine and mining, mercury’s benefits and drawbacks must be placed in the balance.

Scientific Instruments The first major scientific instrument to employ mercury was the barometer, used to measure atmospheric pressure. The first mercury barometer was developed in 1643 by a student of Galileo, the physicist Evangelista Torricelli. Others had attempted to measure atmospheric pressure by creating columns of various fluids, including water, but mercury proved most suitable due to its high density. A relatively compact, 33-inch column could be supported in a mercury reservoir by normal atmospheric conditions. The base unit of “one atmosphere” was set at 29.9 inches of mercury, and this system is still used in the United States instead of the now world-standard metric, expressed in millimeters of mercury. Early experiments with barometers showed their value also as altimeters, but since they were unwieldy they were rarely carried except on major scientific expeditions. Blown-glass mercury thermometers were to prove far more portable than barometers, and hence potentially more dangerous. Historians of science credit German physicist Daniel Gabriel Farenheit with developing the blown-glass mercury thermometer sometime in the 1710s while living in the Netherlands. In 1724 Farenheit published a description of his namesake temperature gauge, still used in the US. Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius offered an alternative scale in 1742. The clinical, or “fever,” thermometer used to measure body temperature was developed in England in 1866 by physician Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt and remained standard until quite recently, when digital thermometers became economical. After 2007 many European countries banned production and sale of blown-glass mercury thermometers, although other countries still produce them and millions remain in use. In lieu of alternatives, it is difficult to imagine how else but by mercury thermometers body temperatures might have been efficiently measured over the last century and a half. As in so many other instances, mercury proved dangerously useful, if not absolutely necessary.

Lighting, Switches, and Batteries In addition to the fluorescent lightbulb, inventors and industrialists employed mercury in making switches, triggers, and batteries. Mercury switches were until recently used to sense off-kilter movements, including the tilting of pinball and vending machines, but more commonly in the manufacture of thermostats. Mercury was used in addition to bimetallic filaments to ease the transitions between the “on” and “off” states of heaters and air conditioners. Many buildings still use these reliable devices, although like thermometers they are being phased out with digital replacements. The same tilt feature of mercury switches has been used to make triggers for various kinds of bombs, including landmines, but this nefarious application has been mostly limited to improvised devices.

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By contrast, fulminate of mercury [Hg(CNO2)], a compound first identified in 1800, has had a long and violent history. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, it was applied to industrial arms manufacture. Small amounts of mercury fulminate were enclosed in caps and built into bullets, rendering flints and flashpans obsolete. Until lead-based alternatives became available in recent years, other uses of mercury fulminate included blasting caps for dynamite, the celebrated (and despised) invention of Alfred Nobel. The amount of mercury used in bullet and blasting cap manufacture was relatively negligible, and probably far less dangerous than the blasts it helped create, but weapons stockpiles and old manufacturing facilities continue to present a notable mercury hazard. Mercuric oxide, usually used in combination with other metallic compounds, was employed beginning in World War II in battery manufacture. Although not rechargeable, mercury-based batteries proved more reliable than any alternatives, including the alkaline cells that have largely replaced them. Mercury-based batteries, like mercury thermometers, are being banned worldwide, mostly due to disposal hazards rather than leakage or any other direct toxic effect on users. In a world increasingly reliant on portable electronics, the search for alternatives to mercury-based batteries is one of several areas of intense research. In all of these industrial applications, mercury has proved versatile and dangerous in roughly equal measure. Only with growing consciousness of mercury’s lingering hazards were inventors and industrialists spurred to develop alternatives.

From Industrial Handmaiden to Angel of Death From 1850 to 1950 mercury’s many applications seemed to promise unlimited progress with the advance of industrial societies and intensified interest in research and development. The saying “better living through chemistry” was as applicable to mercury as it was to any other element. Unfortunately, mercury’s other face, its poisonous aspect, began to reappear, especially after World War II. Mercury sulfate and other such compounds proved to be handy catalysts in the manufacture of polymers, fertilizers, and basic chemicals, many of them developed during wartime. In postwar Japan, industrial production soared as the country rebuilt and reinvented itself as a peaceful powerhouse. The Chisso Company was a pioneer in the manufacture of fertilizer and other industrial chemicals, and ballooning demand for its products combined with negligence and ignorance of waste handling led to the so-called Minamata disaster, first documented in 1956. Minamata Disease, as it became known, was a debilitating ailment caused by the unwitting consumption of methylmercury that had accumulated in fish and shellfish in Minamata Bay. Methylmercury, a highly toxic organic compound discussed at length in other chapters of this volume, had formed as a by-product when mercury salts such as mercury sulfate were used as catalysts to manufacture acetaldehyde, a chemical used for making vinyl, acetates, and other substances. Minamata Disease, which killed as many as 2,000 people and severely affected the lives of many more, awoke the world to the dangers of mercury poisoning. Continued problems with mercury poisoning in and around Minamata Bay recurred into the 1960s and led local citizens to demand government oversight of heavy industry. Despite the global

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awareness of mercury poisoning that resulted from the Minamata Disaster, documented with harrowing immediacy by photographers W. Eugene Smith and Aileen M. Smith, ignorance of mercury’s ubiquity continued to prevail.

THE PRICE OF POWER Given the central and obvious importance of elemental mercury in the gold and silver refining industries described at length above, it may come as some surprise that by far the most significant polluter of recent times—with the exception of some massive volcanic episodes—has nothing to do with refineries or industrial uses of the liquid metal itself. Coal-fired power stations, the number of which has grown exponentially since the antinuclear power movement of the 1970s and 1980s, have become the world’s most prolific sources of mercury contamination. Noting this shift to coal with its mercury pollution is not meant to suggest that the antinuclear movement was misguided, as several “meltdowns” and near misses proved otherwise, but simply that demand for electricity did not diminish, and in fact increased after the late twentieth-century energy crisis. In countries such as the United States and China, which boasted massive reserves, coal emerged as the major source of kilowatts. As nature would have it, coal contains trace amounts of mercury, not enough to cause a stir when small amounts are burned, but enough to pollute oceans and continents when consumed in the quantities needed to power nations of millions and even billions. Some attempts to control mercury emissions have been made at the national level (including by the US Environmental Protection Agency and US Department of Energy), and preliminary discussions have begun internationally. Still, removing mercury vapor from power plant exhaust is difficult, and coal types containing no mercury have yet to be found. Industry advocates have thus stressed emissions reduction rather than elimination. Either way, the scale of the problem has only exploded in recent decades. As in so many other cases described above, human demand for things of beauty, health and hygiene, wealth, efficiency, and now electrical power has intersected with mercury, a metal that has served as both a blessing and a curse.

THE AGE OF ACTIVISM Environmentalism as a political movement is a recent phenomenon. Human concern for health, by contrast, is at least as old as Austria’s prehistoric Ice Man, who carried medicinal herbs and talismans to his death. As we have seen, mercury has for most of human history been associated with health and progress despite knowledge of its poisonous side effects. Only recently have citizens of many parts of the world pressured not only local and national governments but also international oversight bodies to ban many forms of mercury production and dissemination. To reduce its toxic effects on the environment has required a near demonization of mercury, a reversal of its historic role in human affairs. Whereas it was once understood that mercury, like alcohol or many other substances, could kill as well as heal, today it is hard to find anyone willing to defend any of mercury’s “good” qualities. Such may be the nature of activism, but activism, too, may be scrutinized under the historian’s lens.

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Premodern Concerns Regarding Mercury Hazards Ancient writers were aware of mercury toxicity, although they presumably did not understand how exactly it poisoned the human body. As with other pharmakoi it was dosage and form that mattered, not the base material itself. Again, alcohol and other such substances were understood to be toxic in excess but potentially beneficial in moderation or when administered to address a particular ill. Most arguments among physicians up to modern times centered on how mercury was prescribed or handled, not whether it should be prescribed or handled at all. Only with the expansion of the Huancavelica mercury mines in highland Peru in the 1560s do we find an analogue of modern antimercury activism. As historian Kendall Brown has shown, a number of Catholic priests charged with administering the sacraments to Native Americans drafted to work in the mines began to denounce mercury mine and refinery work for its atrocious health effects. They tended to emphasize cave-ins and other hazards as well, but they hoped to win the king’s attention by describing symptoms of acute mercury poisoning that would have been familiar to many in Spain. Worried that their work in saving souls was endangered by Spanish greed (mercury being used for silver amalgamation at Potosí and elsewhere) these writers petitioned the Spanish crown to end the labor draft. As it happened, the proposed alternatives, replacing native Andean workers with either criminal exiles or enslaved Africans, did not prove attractive. The only thing that lessened indigenous suffering at Huancavelica’s mercury mines was the playing out of rich deposits. What about the massive gold and silver refining operations described above? Did they draw similar denunciations? Interestingly, daily use of mercury in silver and gold amalgamation throughout the Americas up to about 1900 was virtually never singled out for reform, despite its obvious health effects. Why? As in the case of Minamata’s Chisso Company, those who stood to profit usually chose to ignore or suppress evidence of mercury’s toxicity. Uninterested in protecting racially or socially marginalized subjects and citizens with such wealth at stake, governments tended to tow the industry line.

Modern Activism vs. Mercury Pollution The pitch and scope of global antimercury activism has only recently expanded, despite the now fifty-plus-year-old lessons of Minamata. Unlike recent antideforestation and climate change campaigns, however, most antimercury activism has derived from everyday fears about personal health rather than more abstract concerns over the global environment per se. Many antimercury activists in the developed world now focus on mercury in fish, dental amalgam, and vaccine preservatives. Others target coal-fired power plant emissions, small-scale gold mining pollution, disposal of mercury-based batteries, and many other concerns. From a historian’s perspective, human feelings about mercury have reached an all-time low; the liquid metal that once fascinated and healed now seems only to be a deadly toxicant that has sneakily infiltrated everything. Environmental activism, or the preservation of natural habitats against, for example, logging, mining, hunting, farming, snowmobiling, and other transformative or

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simply disruptive human activities, is only about a century old in the United States. The idea of parks as national patrimony grew out of older European royal hunting preserves. The notion of setting aside international parks or ecological preserves is an even more recent phenomenon, at least as regards fragile regions in the so-called developing world. Some such preserves in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, several of which are vulnerable to poor gold-seekers using mercury, are now traded as if they were marketable products. Despite flickers of concern in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, modern antimercury activism is perhaps best understood in relation to the Industrial Revolution, particularly in its later phases. Early nineteenth-century industrialization was sharply criticized by anarchists, socialists, communists, and many others, but usually for its social and economic rather than strictly environmental consequences. Still, many Romantics were appalled by what they regarded as industry’s invasive scale and sterility, plus its allegedly deadening effects on the human imagination. Even in the nineteenth century writers and artists were keen to point out the relationship between industrialization and pollution, yet none focused on mercury or other heavy-metal contaminants. Only with the explosion of the petrochemical industry after about 1910 did industrial pollution come to be noticed, but this concern about pollution was to a large degree interrupted by the First World War, the Great Depression, and finally World War II. Only the Roaring Twenties, in which many nations raced to expand production based on new fossil fuels, gave a clue as to what might happen later. Interestingly, coal was in many places seen as a fuel of the past rather than the future. After the devastation wrought by World War II, US, European, and Japanese industries expanded or rebuilt, and amid rapid postwar growth the scale of industrial pollution soon dwarfed anything that had come before. Worker safety rules and regulation of effluents and exhaust lagged far behind the intense pace of industrial expansion, and the corporate rhetoric of the time (for example, with cigarettes and leaded gasoline) was relentlessly upbeat. Having survived the Depression and two world wars, many people were anxious to believe that their lives would indeed be made better through chemistry. Aided by advertising, medical advances, not to mention full employment, comfortable housing, and access to an unprecedented range of consumer goods, seemed to mostly bolster this optimistic view of industrial modernity. Who was to complain if batteries contained mercury when they made music, lighting, and other things portable? And was it not better to have cavities filled with amalgam than to lose one’s photogenic smile? Thus it came as something of a shock that the first world’s growing reliance on industrial chemicals was, in folk language, “akin to holding a bear by the tail.” The Minamata disaster of the mid-1950s threw industrial negligence and government complicity into sharp relief, prompting not only the formation of activist groups seeking redress for specific spills and other incidents but also generally raising popular consciousness as to the potential dark side of industrial development. Mercury was briefly in the spotlight, and especially after the late 1960s people living in industrialized regions worldwide began to notice that living next to smelters, factories, power plants, and so on was probably not good for their or their family’s health. Yet

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the fact that industrial development provided jobs left many ambivalent, uncertain of what to do. Although there had been outspoken individuals since the time of wilderness activist John Muir (1838–1914), it took flaming rivers and the industrial-scale chemical horrors of Vietnam to raise the environmental consciousness of many North Americans. Episodes abroad, such as the inadvertent poisoning of thousands of starving Iraqis who ate mercury-treated seeds sent as food aid, only heightened popular distrust of industry and government, what Dwight D. Eisenhower had famously called the “military–industrial complex.” Out of the inevitable backlash came the formation of the US Environmental Protection Agency, along with many nongovernmental organizations such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, meanwhile, criticizing industrial pollution was not tolerated (although growing popular awareness of it helped erode support for many communist regimes). In the post–Cold War era, environmental activism has become much more diffuse and difficult to pin to larger geopolitical or economic trends. Outspoken activists have been loudly denounced as cranks by conservative regimes in the United States, whereas in Europe and Canada “green” parties have proved quite influential. Japanese critics have not gone unheard, but their voices have been muted lately by economic woes. In much of the developing world, where environmental regulations and enforcement are both lax, activists have faced even greater challenges. In some cases, however, such as that of Choropampa, Peru, site of a 2003 mercury spill related to gold mining (where mercury was being recovered as a by-product of cyanide processing), community outrage over company negligence combined with government corruption led to significant action. Within this larger context of environmental activism, antimercury activism seems to have gained most traction in recent years by focusing on human health effects caused by everyday exposure, particularly to methylmercury in fish but also to mercury compounds in vaccines and dental amalgam. Activism against mercury pollution from mining, heavy industry, and power generation has remained more specialized and abstract, more difficult for many to link to their or their family’s well-being. Although some famous figures have lately become antimercury activists due to their personal travails, activist emphasis on mercury’s insidious effects on the health of children and the unborn have been more effective in generating the emotional energy needed to sustain effective political campaigns. In this view, mercury is now unequivocally a public enemy.

CONCLUSION Humanity’s millennia-long relationship with mercury has been intimate and tangled, torn between attraction and detestation. Since remote antiquity, mercury has yielded many useful pigments, alloys, and medicines. It has enabled recovery of precious metals, as well as the construction of key scientific instruments such as the barometer and thermometer. Mercury compounds have been critical to industry, enabling the manufacture of everything from explosives to batteries to compact fluorescent lightbulbs. In these ways mercury has seemed a remedy and aid to human progress. Yet in keeping with the ambivalent notion of the pharmakon, mercury’s toxicity has always been lurking just beyond the light of these innovations, first in the mines and

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laboratories and factories where countless workers were unwittingly poisoned, but then in the air and water and soil contaminated by vapors and effluents. It is only in the last decades of history, almost the blink of an eye, that humans seem to be coming to grips with the full effects of this dangerous attraction.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Acosta, José de. 2002 (1590). The Natural and Moral History of the Indies. Jane Mangan, ed. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Agricola, Georgius. 1960 (1912). De re metallica. Trans. Herbert Hoover. New York: Dover. Almeida, Paul, and Linda Brewster Stearns. 1998. Political opportunities and local grassroots environmental movements: The case of Minamata. Social Problems, 45(1):37–60. Bakewell, Peter J., ed. 1997. Mines of Silver and Gold in the Americas. Aldershot: Variorum. Bakewell, Peter J. 1971. Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico, Zacatecas, 1546– 1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 545–579. Brading, David, and Harry Cross. 1972. Colonial silver mining: Mexico and Peru. Hispanic American Historical Review, 52:545–79. Brown, Kendall. 2001. Workers’ health and colonial mercury mining at Huancavelica, Peru. The Americas, 57:467–496. Cooke, Colin A., Prentis H. Balcom, Harald Biestar, and Alexander P. Wolfe. 2009. Over three millennia of mercury pollution in the Peruvian Andes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(22):8830–8834. Craig, Alan K., and Robert C. West, eds. 1994. In Quest of Mineral Wealth: Aboriginal and Colonial Mining and Metallurgy in Spanish America (Geoscience and Man 33). Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Doktor, Raphael. 1938. Pigments of the painter. Parnassus, 10(5):21–27. Eliade, Mircea. 1978 (1956). The Forge and the Crucible: The Origins and Structures of Alchemy. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Goldwater, Leonard J. 1972. Mercury: A History of Quicksilver. Baltimore: York Press. Hadsund, Per. 1993. The tin-mercury mirror: Its manufacturing technique and deterioration processes. Studies in Conservation, 38(1):3–16. Harper, Martin. 1987. Possible toxic metal exposure of prehistoric bronze workers. British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 44(10):652–656. Humboldt, Alexander von. 1972 (1811). Discourse and Reflections on the Kingdoms of New Spain. Mary Maples Dunn, ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Lohmann Villena, Guillermo. 1949. Las minas de huancavelica en los siglos XVI y XVII. Seville: EEHA. Michiko, Ishimure. 1990. Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow: Our Minamata Disease. Kyoto: Yamaguchi. Mishima, Akio. 1992. Bitter Sea: The Human Cost of Minamata Disease. Tokyo: Kosei. Pearson, Michael N. 1995. The thin end of the wedge: Medical relativities as a paradigm of early modern Indian-European relations. Modern Asian Studies, 29(1):141–170. Pendergast, David M. 1982. Ancient Maya mercury. Science (New Series), 217(4559):533–535. Swiderski, Richard. 2008. Quicksilver: A History of the Use, Lore, and Effects of Mercury. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. Whitaker, Arthur P. 1941. The Huancavelica Mercury Mine: A Contribution to the History of the Bourbon Renaissance in the Spanish Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. White, David Gordon. 1984. Why gurus are heavy. Numen, 31, Fasc. 1 (July):40–73. Young, Otis E., Jr. 1970. Western Mining. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

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Human Impacts on Earth’s Natural Mercury Cycle* Elizabeth Malcolm

CONTENTS Introduction............................................................................................................... 33 Mercury’s Chemical Nature...................................................................................... 34 On the Trail of Mercury............................................................................................ 36 Geosphere............................................................................................................. 37 Atmosphere.......................................................................................................... 37 Hydrosphere......................................................................................................... 39 Biosphere.............................................................................................................40 Lake Champlain Study......................................................................................... 41 Human Perturbation.................................................................................................. 42 The Ocean Frontier...................................................................................................44 Mercury Footprint..................................................................................................... 45 Conclusion................................................................................................................48 References.................................................................................................................48 When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe. —John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra

INTRODUCTION Mercury, a naturally occurring element on the earth, is neither created nor destroyed. Unlike pollutants such as the pesticide DDT made famous by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring, or ozone-layer-destroying CFCs, mercury is not manmade. Mercury is found everywhere in small amounts—in rocks, soils, air, water, plants, animals, and humans. It has been continuously moved and cycled throughout the earth over its 4.6-billion-year history both by natural and human processes. However, compared to any natural process, human actions have greatly accelerated movement of this metal out of the earth’s crust *

This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Gerald J. Keeler, my advisor and friend, and international mercury expert. I knew Jerry as an inspiring mentor who could bring out the best in his students. His pioneering contributions in atmospheric mercury research have forever changed our understanding of the mercury cycle and mercury pollution.

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where it was stable and sequestered, and transferred it to air, soil, and surface waters where it finds its way into aquatic food webs and, ultimately, into humans. Even though mercury is a natural element it is still considered a pollutant and has increasingly received a great deal of attention from environmentalists. Why spend billions to study, clean up, and regulate a metal that occurs naturally in the environment? Where does mercury come from, and how does mercury get into our lakes, rivers and oceans? To answer these questions we need to understand the path mercury takes through the environment—how it goes from a volcano or power plant to the air, then water, and into fish; how mercury from a coal plant in China is found in a polar bear in Canada or fish in a New England pond; and how mercury, through a natural processes of bioaccumulation, can prove toxic to wildlife and humans. Mercury is continuously being recycled in this natural, everlasting journey of mercury atoms through living things and the earth (Figure 3.1). Mercury is global in both its sources and distribution. Natural and industrial emissions of mercury are transported around the world in the atmosphere, resulting in mercury contamination. This chapter examines how humans have affected mercury on a local and global scale and thus increased concentrations of mercury in the environment. What controls mercury’s distribution and transport in the environment? To understand the story of mercury’s global travels we must understand its chemistry, geology, and biological effects as well as the human impacts on its cycle.

MERCURY’S CHEMICAL NATURE Mercury is a heavy metal, “Hg” on the periodic table. It not only shares some properties with its neighboring metals but also has some important and unique characteristics. Its most basic chemical form, elemental mercury, is found by itself and not bonded to any other elements (Benjamin and Honeyman, 1992). This elemental, inorganic mercury is the silver-colored mercury used in thermometers and dental fillings. Unlike other metals it is a liquid at room temperature, making it ideal for many medical and electronic applications. Like other metals (lead, copper, arsenic, etc.), mercury forms strong bonds with sulfur (S). Hence, most mercury is found in the earth’s crust as the mineral cinnabar, HgS, and inside the human body mercury forms bonds with the sulfur groups of proteins (Benjamin and Honeyman, 1992). Mercury can also bond with carbon, forming organic molecules. The most noteworthy of these is called methylmercury. In methylmercury, one or two CH3 (“methyl”) groups are bound to mercury. This organic form is the most toxic form of mercury found in the environment, much more toxic than the inorganic forms previously mentioned. Since in its organic form mercury binds to proteins, it markedly accumulates in the tissues of living organisms such as fish. One of mercury’s unusual properties is its ability to become a gas at much lower temperatures than all other metals, making it the only metal found as a gas in the earth’s atmosphere. As a result, whenever something is heated that contains mercury, such as coal, some of the mercury is released as a gas into the air. These gaseous forms of mercury can then be easily transported in the atmosphere away from an emissions source, traveling even thousands of kilometers. The chemistry of mercury thus makes it a unique pollutant and plays a large role in its use, transport, and toxicity.

Microbes convert inorganic mercury to methylmercury

Phytoplankton and plants take up methylmercury

Methylmercury concentration increases up the food web

FIGURE 3.1  The mercury cycle. S. Ryan Lewis (’10), Creative Services, College of William & Mary.

MERCURY

Natural Sources

ES

Human Emissions (e.g. coal burning)

MERCURY VAPOR/MER CUR YO NP AR TI CL

Human Impacts on Earth’s Natural Mercury Cycle 35

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TABLE 3.1 Seafood Species Containing the Highest Concentrations of Mercury as Reported by the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA, 2009) Species Tilefish Shark Swordfish King Mackerel

Mean Concentration (ppm)

Concentration Range (ppm)

1.45 0.99 0.98 0.73

0.65–3.73